Located along Gentilly Boulevard in what is now a central location, for one hundred and two years, Mount Olivet Cemetery has been a burial place for black New Orleanians from all walks of life. Unlike the city’s older cemeteries, which are either sectarian or municipally-owned, Mount Olivet was chartered on 6 March 1918 as a for-profit business. The Gentilly area, which houses Mount Olivet, was still home to several large undeveloped tracts of land in the early 20^th century. When Mount Olivet was established, the St. John Berchmans Orphanage would not be completed for another seven years and it would be fifteen years before the cornerstone was laid for neighboring Dillard University. Mount Olivet Cemetery was named for ‘Mount Olivet’ or the ‘Mount of Olives,’ so frequently mentioned in the Bible, which has been used as a Jewish burial place for over 3,000 years.

Real estate developers initially planned for two cemeteries along Gentilly Boulevard. The firm of Baccich & deMontluzin, who laid out the Gentilly Terrace subdivision, had plans to create the “Rose Hill Burial Park” on what is now the site of Dillard University. Following the Forest Lawn model pioneered by Hubert Eaton in Los Angeles, Rose Hill was intended to be a “burial park” rather than a cemetery, with extensive landscaping and ‘perpetual care’ built into the sale price of each grave. Rose Hill Burial Park never materialized although, according to local legend, at least one body from a local hospital was interred there to avoid paying property taxes.

Early Advertisement for Mount Olivet

The investors in Mount Olivet, led by Board president Hunter C. Leake, purchased the Zagame and Aurianne tracts to serve as the new cemetery. Unlike Rose Hill, which was marketed toward the well-to-do, plots in Mount Olivet were sold at reasonable prices, beginning at fifty dollars. Advertisements were placed in the local papers appealing to working-class individuals, urging them to secure “a place to rest.” The primary face of the cemetery in those early years was J. Henry Blache, the veteran real estate salesman, who sold the plots from his office on Carondelet Street.

Early Advertisement for Mount Olivet

The first burials began in the spring of 1918. The cemetery was so new and located in such an unfamiliar location that early obituaries included directions advising mourners as to which streetcar line to take.

Obituary for the Reverend Julius Walter Willard, buried in Mount Olivet eight months after it opened; advising mourners to take the Broad streetcars marked “Paris Avenue.”

Willard Plot, including Rev. Julius Walter Willard and Hon. Elliot “Doc” Willard

Recently, some of the writers here at CreoleGen made three visits to Mount Olivet, surveying the historic burial ground for familiar and unfamiliar names as well as interesting graves. The “cemetery” portion of Mount Olivet, which is accessed via Warrington Drive or Norman Mayer Avenue consists primarily of copings with a number of family tombs and a few society tombs interspersed throughout. There are also a very few in-ground burials in plots where copings or tombs were not built.

Directly in front of the cemetery is the one-story ‘Garden Mausoleum,’ which was built in 1971. The larger multistory mausoleums which make up the front of Mount Olivet are expansions which began in 1982, 1985, and most recently in 2000. The Mount Olivet Company, Inc. was sold to the Stewart Family (which later operated under the business title Stewart Enterprises) in 1943. Stewart Enterprises was sold to Service Corporation International (SCI) in 2013. SCI is currently the largest funeral service provider in the country.

Below is presented a sampling of the graves in Mount Olivet. There are several notable individuals buried there whose names have previously appeared in posts on CreoleGen. There are also several families whose names would be familiar to our readership. Special attention was given to society copings and society tombs, including what may be the largest plot in the cemetery, the so-called “Arabian Plot,” which includes several New Orleanians of Middle-Eastern origin. There are at least three black Civil War veterans buried in the cemetery. Some graves have been featured because of their unique design or size, for example, the imposing Lawless Tomb, which towers over the cemetery’s east-west roadway. We hope that this photographic journey through Mount Olivet will be an interesting foray into one of New Orleans’ famed “cities of the dead.”

In most instances, you can click the picture to see a larger image.

Sources: The Herald (New Orleans), 21 March 1918, p. 12; The Times-Picayune, 19 May 1918, p. B-16; 24 March 1919, p. 2; 14 March 1918, p. 9; 12 June 1943, p. 28; 7 May 1964, sec. 1, p. 33; 10 October 1971, sec. 1, p. 22; 19 December 1982, sec. 7, p. 1-Ac; 31 October 1985, p. A-33; 31 March 2000, p. B-2.

Jari C. Honora & Lolita V. Cherrie

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