Metairie Cemetery

Charles T. Howard made his fortune running Louisiana's first state lottery. The Metairie Jockey Club — which operated a horse racing track founded in 1838 on a high ridge along Bayou Metairie — refused him membership. Howard vowed the track would become a cemetery. After the Civil War and Reconstruction, the course went bankrupt. In 1872, Metairie Cemetery opened on the oval footprint of the old racetrack. Howard is buried on Central Avenue. He died in 1885 in Dobbs Ferry, New York, when he fell from a newly purchased horse. The cemetery holds the largest collection of elaborate marble tombs and funeral statuary in the city. The Moriarty tomb rises 60 feet — the tallest privately owned monument in the United States. Construction required a temporary spur railroad line to haul materials to the site. A pseudo-Egyptian pyramid stands among the grounds. Laure Beauregard Larendon's tomb features Moorish details and stained glass. The Army of Tennessee, Louisiana Division monument is a Confederate soldiers' tomb with two works by sculptor Alexander Doyle. Atop the structure, an 1877 equestrian statue of General Albert Sidney Johnston on his horse Fire-eater, holding binoculars in his right hand. Johnston's remains were later moved to Texas. To the right of the entrance, an 1885 life-size statue represents a Confederate officer about to read the roll of the dead. The figure is said to be modeled after Sergeant William Brunet of the Louisiana Guard Battery but is intended to represent all Confederate soldiers. P. G. T. Beauregard, a Confederate general who started the American Civil War, is buried here. Jefferson Davis was buried at Metairie Cemetery but his remains were moved to Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia in 1893. The cemetery also holds the former tomb of Storyville madam Josie Arlington and the memorial of 19th-century police chief David Hennessy, whose murder sparked a riot. Self-guided visits are permitted daily.