As I posted on Facebook, "Bourbon Street smelled like pee and vomit. The Garden District smells like flowers." This is obviously a rich part of town, and I guess it was that way from the beginning. The French Quarter was settled by Creoles before New Orleans was even part of the United States. After the Louisiana Purchase, Americans tried to move into New Orleans but clashed with the Creoles over everything -- religion, culture, language, and business opportunities. So the Americans moved upriver and created the Garden District, making it especially opulent basically on purpose.
Ahead of time I had printed out a Garden District walking tour. I strayed from the tour now and then, but it was good to have some guidance and further detail into some of the things I was seeing. For instance, this house has a very cool cornstalk fence. One story says it's because the owner's wife missed the cornfields of her native Iowa. Another story says the owner's wife picked it because it was the most expensive fence in the catalog.
Another old iron horse hitching post.
This house used to be a Catholic chapel. Anne Rice owned it at one point.
Beautifully kept. I bet it costs a lot just to maintain these old houses.
It was a terribly hot day so I loved being able to travel through these cool shady tunnels where trees curved and met over the sidewalk.
It was interesting to see the different styles of architecture. This house is supposedly haunted.
A mysterious and inviting door.
We have this bush in Florida too. It smells so heavenly and rich and reminds me of honeysuckle from back in Maryland. I finally found out it is called Confederate Jasmine. A hedge of this ensures a very pleasant walk down the sidewalk.
This 6700 square foot, 5 bedroom, 5 bath house can be yours for only $2.5 million!
I love the old sidewalks but you definitely have to watch your step.
This fence's woven pattern is believed to be the precursor to the chain link fence.
Some houses are nearly hidden by large walls and hedges, and can only be glimpsed through gates. Often I could hear water fountains tinkling behind the walls.
Jefferson Davis, former president of the Confederate States of America, died in 1889 in this house belonging to one of his friends.
This is the wall surrounding Lafayette Cemetery.
The culmination of my walking tour was one of the sights I most wanted to see: Lafayette Cemetery, one of New Orleans' famous old "Cities of the Dead." I guess the people of New Orleans soon learned that burying their dead underground was not a good idea in an area with a high water table, since after rainstorms, coffins tended to float back up to the surface. So they built above ground tombs, laid out just like little houses on streets.
Many tombs house entire families. This family lost at least seven children before they grew out of toddlerhood. Many tombs listed multiple infants and children dying in a family.
This was the only open/empty tomb I came across, and it was especially interesting to me since Koenig is a family name!
Although most of the tombs in this cemetery were in a grave (hehe) state of disrepair, I also saw many with flowers, candles, and other pretty recent offerings from the living.
This "Basilice Barbay" is listed as the "Consort of Christoval Toledano," which I found interesting so I did a Google search. Basilice was Christoval's first wife, although it looks like Christoval married his second wife before Basilice died, so I don't know if they got divorced? Maybe that was why she got relegated to "consort" on the tomb? Christoval built his second wife a house on the Gulf in Biloxi, MS that was on the National Register of Historic Places until a casino barge washed ashore during Hurricane Katrina and smashed it to bits.
It's amazing how you can get lost on the internet with just a couple of searches...
This little tomb had a fenced yard and everything. Even in the bright sun, it was on the creepy side. I would have loved to have been here on a stormy day.
I tried to get a picture of a big black bird perched ominously on the head of this angel, but it flew away. (The bird, not the angel.)
I loved wandering up and down these "streets."
On the outside looking in...
That was the end of my tour of the Garden District. I was boiling hot and my feet hurt so I went into an air-conditioned book shop to browse for a while, and then had an iced mocha at a little coffeeshop, Still Perkin', before catching the streetcar back to my hotel.
On the way back, it became obvious that St Charles Street is a route for at least one of the Mardi Gras parades. Trees, especially those in the median (called the Neutral Zone), were draped in beads.
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