Lakelawn Metairie Cemetery- Graveyard to New Orleans' Rich and Powerful

Cemetery Information

Hours and Info

Location: 5100 Pontchartrain Blvd, New Orleans, LA 70124

Hours: 8:00am - 5:00pm 7 days

Holidays: closed

Maintained by: Privately held and maintained

Established: 1872

*all photos were taken by and are the property of the author*

Lakelawn Metaire Cemetery at Dawn

Delgado Sarcophagus style tomb

The Legend of Metairie Lakelawn's Founding

A Carpetbagger's Revenge?

The story goes that Metairie Racecourse, a private club of New Orleans' rich and powerful, would not admit a Yankee carpetbagger during the Civil War's Reconstruction period. After repeated attempts, said carpetbagger decided getting even was better than getting mad.

He angrily announced at a membership meeting, having been rejected again, that he was going to buy their precious track and turn it into a cemetery! Of course everyone laughed and laughed...

Over the next few years as money grew tighter, many of those in charge fell on hard times, and soon enough the race course was put up for sale, where it was purchased by that same Yankee, who did just what he promised.

Not only was it turned into a graveyard, but the most elegant one in the city, so much so that those same people who denied him membership are all buried inside its gates!

Metairie Lakelawn's Millionaire's Row

The Race Course Succumbs

The truth is a little more complicated, of course. During the Civil War portions of Metairie's grounds had been taken over by the Army and turned into "Camp Walker," an ill-fated training camp.

In placing it there, military folks were thinking: Conveniently close to the city and port of New Orleans. Excellent!

New Orleanians were thinking: Entertainment! Excellent!

As would happen again with Storyville before WWI, having young soldiers too close to New Orleans was into too much of temptation. Wives, girlfriends, families and the curious would picnic at the course, watching and cheering the men on, generally being a distraction.

Once they'd gone home the men would slip into town for a little unsanctioned "R-and-R."

It wasn't long before the Army moved its operation to the swamps of Tangipahoa.

With the men gone to war and steadily deteriorating living conditions, the Race Course was closed from 1861-1865. When it reopened it tried to go on as before, but without its former luster. Struggling to stay afloat they started hosting prizefighting matches- illegal within city limits- but to no avail.

While they fought to stay afloat there was fighting in the membership, and a splinter group evolved. This group went on to found the Louisiana Jockey Club, known today as the Fair Grounds Racetrack.

It was in fact one of those defectors who bought the track in 1872 for $120,000 who immediately turned it into a cemetery to 'bury*' the competition.

*Sorry! Couldn't resist!

Lakelawn Residents

As the place to be buried, Lakelawn Metairie has many notable people within its bounds, including 11 Louisiana governors,9 New Orleans mayors, dozens of Confederate notables and blue blooded businessmen beyond count.

Many of the stories deserve a page of their own, and those will be linked below, but here are just a few of the amazing tombs and their stories.

Storyville Madam Josie Arlington

Josie Arlington

The name on the tomb is now Morales, but it was custom built for Josie Arlington, one of the most affluent and notorious brothel owners in New Orleans' legalized red light district, Storyville.

Her story is similar to the tale told about the cemetery itself- having brought herself up in the world from a streetwalker to earning over a million dollars in the early 1900s, she found herself rejected from wider society, despite good and charitable works. She designed the tomb showing a young woman turning her back to this world and moving on to the next.

Considered a major scandal, stories about the tomb being haunted started soon after her death and persist to this day.

More Information about Josie's Infamous Tomb

• Haunted New Orleans: Josie Arlington's Flaming Tomb
  The Storyville Madam's tomb made national news, and people came from hundreds of miles to see the harlot's grave glowing in hell's reflected light...

The Egan's Ruined Castle

The Egan Family's "Ruined Castle"

Although it appears that something horrible's happened to the Egan monument, it was designed to look like the ruined chapel on their family estates in Ireland.

The caskets are underneath in a vault.

The inscription reads:

Lieutenant Colonel HENRY I. EGAN

Killed at Amelia Springs, Va

While in command of

Sharpshooters, Gordon's Division,

Covering Retreat of Lee's Army

April 6, 1865. Aged 24 years

Dr. Yelverton B. Egan

Killed at the Battle of Sharpsburg (Antietam)

September 17,1863. Aged 24 years

Egan Archway

Louisiana Division of the Army of Tennessee

Louisiana Division- Army of Tennessee

This 30 foot high tumulus (burial mound) is topped by a bronze statue of General Albert Sidney Story as described to the artist from the moments before he died storming the Northern troops in the first hours of the Battle of Shiloh.

Story himself was buried here only briefly before his body was moved to the Texas State Cemetery.

Outside stands a lifesize Confederate soldier reading a roll of the dead. The soldier's face is taken from a death mask of a sergeant in the Division, now buried inside the monument.

This tomb used to have pride of place, being at the front gate, but when the interstate was cut through, the entryway was moved, though now the General is visible from the highway.

The most famous occupant is General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, a native New Orleanian who ordered the first shots of the war on Fort Sumter and was active the entire duration of the war, dying at the ripe old age of 75.

Battle Roll

An active force in the Civil War

The above tablet bears the famous inscription

Before man made us citizens, great nature made us men.

It also lists the battles the Louisiana Division fought in:

• Fort Sumpter
• Santa Rosa Island
• Belmont
• Fishing Creek
• Oak Hill
• Donelson
• Elk Horn
• Shiloh
• Island No. 10
• Fort Jackson
• Fort St. Philip
• Sabine Pass
• Labadieville
• Baton Rouge
• Perryville
• Camp Bisland
• Murfreesboro
• Iuka
• Corinth
• Chickasaw Bayou
• Baker's Creek
• Farmington
• Richmond KY
• Mill Springs
• Munfrodsville
• Pea Ridge
• Prairie Grove
• Thompson Station
• Fort Hindman
• Ezra Chapel

Harrington Tomb

Joseph "Neversmile" Harrington

Joseph Harrington was a professional gambler who'd earned a name for himself for his habit of seeming to know what cards he held without ever actually looking at them.

When not gambling, he was said to be a kind and gentle man, but while "working," he was all business, hence his nickname.

After a particularly good day at "the office," he was shot while returning home, smashing into a pole. He'd known something was wrong; witnesses said he'd reversed the car and sped 50 feet backward to get away from his presumed attacker.

He was already dead by the time the police arrived, and Neversmile hadn't been robbed- he had $1,000 pinned to his underclothes and $305 in his pants pocket- although that could've been only because the shooter hadn't counted on a witness at 2:30 in the morning on the quiet street.

Theories differed about who might've done it, whether it was someone who knew he'd left the racetrack and card table flush with cash, or a random attack, but no one was ever arrested for the crime.

His widow commissioned this very large tomb with a bronze statue of a woman mourning at the tomb, but the judge overseeing the estate disallowed it on the basis that it would cost too much, based on the assets Neversmile left behind.

Bertha Harrington persisted, though- surely not because she knew of some money her husband hadn't claimed? Nah...

Incidentally, Bertha died many years later after herself crashing into a telephone pole.

Where is it?