NOLA Cemetery Tours with Two Chicks Walking Tours

I was looking for a walking tour of New Orleans that included both a cemetery tour as well more information about Storyville and the French Quarter. I found Two Chicks Walking Tours and their ‘Dead Sexy’ tour seemed like the perfect combination. Here are some of the NOLA cemetery tours that Two Chicks Walking Tours offer, and a review of my experience on the ‘Dead Sexy’ walking tour.

Disclosure: I was a guest of Two Chicks Walking Tours, however, as always, all opinions are my own.

NOLA Cemetery tours offered by Two Chicks

Two Chicks Walking Tours offer five different NOLA Cemetery Tours. All their NOLA cemetery tours are between 1 and 2 hours in length, so you can pick the one that most suits your needs and interests.

The Dead Sexy Walking Tour

Picking a tour

Given we only had 3 days in New Orleans, I was excited at the prospect of being able to learn more about the now razed district of Storyville, as well as visit a cemetery all in one tour. The Dead Sexy tour allows access to St Louis Cemetery #1, which is only accessible to the public with a licensed tour guide.

Meeting the tour

Our meeting place was a great coffee shop not far from St Louis Cemetery #1 on Basin Street. Backatown Coffee is a light spacious café that serves delicious iced-coffee. A perfect spot to gather before the tour begins.

St. Louis Cemetery #1

St. Louis Cemetery #1 is the oldest in New Orleans. You may recognise it from the acid trip scene in the movie Easy Rider. They filmed in the cemetery without permission by the way! It is shenanigans like this, as well as an increase in vandalism, that caused the Roman Catholic Dioceses to shut down public access to the site. It is now only accessible with registered tour guides.

Among some famous names buried at St. Louis #1 is the voodoo practitioner, Marie Laveau. Actor Nicolas Cage has also purchased an ostentatious pyramid shaped crypt to be his final resting place – much to the dislike of NOLA locals. We saw many styles of crypts, as well as the stepped graves, which stop any ground burials from rising up out of the ground due to the high water table.

The Crypts

Stacy our guide explained that the popularity of crypts in New Orleans actually comes from a Spanish influence. The French gave New Orleans to the Spanish to pay a war debt and it was under their control for 40 years at the end of the 18th century. The Spanish introduced the space and time efficient system of crypts. Essentially a stone oven, a body will decompose, dry up and disintegrate within a year in a crypt. The bottom part of a crypt is used as a collection for the minimal remains. It means that family crypts last for generations within a small footprint of space.

There are both society crypts, which allow communities to have a shared space. As well as public crypts where, if more than one family member dies in the space of one year, the family can rent a crypt until such time as the remains can be transferred into the family vault.

Storyville

After an hour exploring St. Louis Cemetery #1, it was time for a quick break at Backatown Café. Since the district of Storyville was razed in the 1930s to make way for the Iberville social housing project, there is nothing left of it to walk around. There is only a few of these 1930s houses remaining after Hurricane Katrina too. So we began this part of the tour near the café. Storyville was the red light district between 1897 to 1917. It was a sanctioned area for these activities in an effort to regulate and control the business. Nicknamed after a city councilman, Sidney Story, who worked on legislating the area, the name Storyville stuck, much to the councilman’s chagrin. Famous names to be associated with Storyville include E.J. Bellocq, Tony Jackson, Louis Armstrong, and Jelly Roll Morton.

I read about photographer E.J. Bellocq when I was 18 and at university studying photography. Bellocq took candid photos of ladies of the night in Storyville in the early part of the 20th century. His photographs were discovered after his death and reprinted by Lee Friedlander in 1970. These mysterious photos made me curious about both the city of New Orleans, as well as the district of Storyville; not to mention the intricacies of photographing such an area!

NOLA French Quarter

The French Quarter is only two blocks away, and while we walked Stacy pointed out buildings that were once brothels, saloons, and remnants of a bygone era. We stopped at a building that had been a brothel, but is now apartments – the heritage is played upon and celebrated with tongue and cheek signage. The tour ends at May Baily’s Place, a Creole-style cottage that was once a bordello, but now a bar! A fitting end to a wonderful tour.

NOLA cemetery tours

There are many NOLA cemetery tours to choose from, but we were glad to have taken the Dead Sexy Tour with Two Chicks Walking Tours. It was a nice mix of cemetery history, New Orleans history, and details about Storyville and the people that made it infamous. Stacy was a fun and animated guide who really had a passion for the history of the area; and that came across in her delivery of the tour. I also really liked that the tour group sizes are kept small – it makes it far more personalised tour.

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All photos & content © Hannah Henderson and may not be used without permission (sharing this blog post is fine, though!). Images shot with a Canon DSLR T3i Rebel + Canon EF-S 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM; and an iPhoneX.