Look Who's Knocking

Happy Halloween!

Storyville Madam Josie Arlington's former tomb in Metairie Cemetery, designed by the Albert Weiblen Marble and Granite Company in 1911, frequently tops the list of most haunted sites in New Orleans. Weiblen architect Lorenzo Orsini developed the preliminary sketches for the red granite tomb surmounted with flambeaux.  Derived from a similar work in the city cemetery of Munich, the bronze figure of a woman carries a bundle of roses as she reaches her hand out towards the tomb door.  

Image above:  Lorenzo Orsini. John T. Brady (Tomb for Josie Arlington), Metairie Cemetery. 1911. Albert Weiblen Marble and Granite Company Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

NEW! Weiblen Finding Aid

The Southeastern Architectural Archive recently completed the full processing of the Albert Weiblen Marble and Granite Company Office Records. The collection consists of project drawings, photographs, sales specimens, correspondence, ledgers and indices. Highlights include drawings for the Josie Arlington tomb in Metairie Cemetery, the plaster model for the McCarthy Square Victory Arch, and a series of historic tomb images commissioned by architect Charles L. Lawhon of photographer Louis T. Fritch.

This and other SEAA finding aids may be found online here.

Image above:  “Albert Weiblen.” In W.K. Patrick & Assoc. Club Men of Louisiana in Caricature. East Aurora, NY: The Roycrofters, 1917. The Louisiana Research Collection, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Metairie Cemetery Souvenir Map

An early souvenir map  that shows the locations of the lagoons along the perimeters of Metairie Cemetery. Dug in 1890, these lagoons benefited from proximity to the New Basin Canal, from which gravity pumps diverted fresh water. Congestion problems at the intersection of Metairie and Pontchartrain Boulevards and City Park Avenue were well publicized by 1929, and by the 1950s these roadways were widened and this stretch of the New Basin Canal was filled.(1)

(1)Henri A. Gandolfo. Metairie Cemetery: An Historical Memoir. New Orleans: Stewart Enterprises, 1981 and "Pleasant Scenes on Metairie Trip" The Times-Picayune (3 November 1929): p. 1; 6.

Image above: Souvenir Map Presented to Mr. S.H. Bell by Helmuth Holtz. New Orleans: February 1904. Albert Weiblen Marble & Granite Company Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries. The SEAA retains other maps of the cemetery, from 1955; 1965; 1975; 1978.