Full History of Joseph Street Cemetery
Based on history compiled by Jakob Rosenzweig and Rick Streiffer, 2021
For more pictures of the Joseph Street Cemetery, please visit the Gallery here.
Early Days
In early January 1850, the founding organizers of Congregation Sha’aray Tefilev, which would someday become known by its English name, Gates of Prayer, began to search for a suitable property to bury its dead properly. This pursuit coincided with an application for a charter to formalize the Jewish Congregation, well before they had an initial permanent synagogue or even before they'd identified a regular meeting place.
On January 12, 1850, “The Hebrew Congregation” (as it was referred to in the Sheriff’s record of the property transfer) purchased a square of land with intentions to use it as a cemetery. The land was located in the Hurstville neighborhood of Lafayette City, an upriver neighbor of New Orleans in what was then considered Jefferson Parish.
The record indicates that the property, which John Calhoun previously owned, was being sold “by virtue of a writ of seizure” by Sheriff Valmont Soniat Dufossat for $695. The property consisted of what today we recognize as a complete city block — 20 lots surrounded by Arabella Street, Joseph Street, Pitt Street, and Garfield Street.
A square of land in the Hurstville neighborhood of Lafayette City in Jefferson Parish was acquired on January 12, 1850 by “The Hebrew Congregation” for use as a cemetery by the new congregation. The property was being sold “by virtue of a writ of seizure” by Sheriff Valmont Soniat Dufossat.
This historical marker, found at Jefferson Avenue and Magazine Street, only five blocks from the cemetery, notes that the area was part of Jefferson Parish at the time the cemetery was acquired in 1850.
On January 13, 1850, during a special meeting of the fledgling Congregation, Mr. B. Goldenberg made a motion, seconded by Mr. F. Bachrach, and confirmed unanimously that “a piece of land be purchased for a cemetery.” President Abraham de Young was asked to lead a small group to “attend to all necessary matters in connection with the cemetery…” On January 24, 1850, “…a letter was to be sent to the Police Jury requesting permission to bury our dead in the newly acquired piece of land, and to make a cemetery out of it.” Two years after the acquisition, in 1852, the City of Lafayette, which had been incorporated as a city of Jefferson Parish in 1833, was annexed by its larger neighbor to become part of New Orleans along with the Joseph Street Cemetery.
Main entrance and Plotkin Pavilion of the Joseph Street Cemetery.
Burials may have occurred right away. However, records indicate the first documented burials occurred in 1853, early enough in New Orleans Jewish history to make Joseph Street the City’s third-oldest Jewish Cemetery. It remains the second oldest Jewish Cemetery in existence in New Orleans.
The first Jewish Cemetery in the City, the Gates of Mercy Cemetery, was established on Jackson Street (now Avenue) and Saratoga Street around 1828. It fell into a state of disrepair and was demolished in 1957 after the City asserted eminent domain to build a playground. Before the demolition, the remains from Gates of Mercy Cemetery were moved to Hebrew Rest Cemetery No. 1 in Gentilly. A plaque serves as a reference point to this historical Cemetery and its Congregation. The second-oldest and oldest surviving Jewish Cemetery in the City is called Dispersed of Judah. It was established in 1846 and is located just off Canal Street, facing North Anthony St., and is just a block away from GOP's Canal St. Cemetery, below.
The Joseph Street cemetery’s documented initial use in 1853 coincides with the height of the worst Yellow Fever epidemic seen in New Orleans. Although our swampy City experienced repeated Yellow Fever epidemics between 1796 and 1859, historians note that this period saw far fewer fatalities compared to the six years from 1853 to 1858, and the “great epidemic” of 1853, when nearly 8,000 of the City's residents died. A list of over one hundred victims of that epidemic, found at Findagrave.com, are believed to be buried at Joseph Street. However, the locations of the graves are not known.
According to historian and former archivist for Touro Infirmary, Florence M. Jumonville, Joseph Street Cemetery again accepted victims of yet another Yellow Fever epidemic in 1878, twenty-five years after the Cemetery's opening. The unfortunate were interred in Section C. Despite the feasibility of this information, no evidence (including headstones nor any records in the Congregation's ledgers) has been found confirming burials in Section C before 1902.
The Joseph Street Cemetery was used regularly and attended to faithfully over the following decades, as documented meticulously in the minutes of the Congregation’s Board. Deaths and permission for burial, the locations of graves, the need for repair and maintenance, and even controversies such as the burial of non-Jewish spouses or unauthorized burials were dutifully entered into the proceedings well into the last quarter of the 20th century. A special booklet commemorating the Congregation’s Golden Jubilee (1851–1901) captures the special place the Cemetery held in the hearts of the congregants: “In the quiet precincts of the ‘Beth Olam’ [House of Eternity], Cemetery Gates of Prayer, on Joseph street, where Nature always dons a verdant garb bestrewn with loveliest flowers, a fitting resting place for those sleeping the sleep of the righteous -rest the remains of dear, lamented brethren…”
One of several small sections for babies and young children, necessitated by the unfortunately frequent mortality of children in the 19th and early 20th century.
Joseph Street, Section "A".
Joseph Street, Section "B".
Joseph Street, Section "E".
Joseph Street, Section "F".
Medauer House and Plotkin Pavilion
The first mention of a desire and need to build a “metaher” house was found in the minutes of January 23, 1853. From the Hebrew word “to purify” and later referred to as the Medauer House, the structure served as a shelter for mourners to find respite from the New Orleans sun and weather. It was also a place to honor and presumably to prepare the deceased before burial. Exactly when the first Medauer house was built and how many subsequent structures succeeded it is not known. However, according to those who remember the 20th-century building, we know it was built in the late 1800s. A plaque from the old Medauer House commemorates its 1924 dedication to the memory of Joseph Goldstein, who served as the Chairman of the Joseph Street Cemetery Committee for decades.
From the corner of Joseph St and Garfield, and taken before 2015, one can see the Medauer House in the Joseph St Cemetery. It was replaced with the Plotkin Pavilion in 2015.
After nearly a century of service, the Medauer House was torn down in 2014–15. In its place, a new open-plan structure called The Plotkin Pavilion was erected in honor of the major donors who made its construction possible. The Pavilion, located in the center of the Joseph Street side of the Cemetery in nearly the same footprint, was dedicated on September 20, 2015.
Memorial Section
In the mid-1970s, after over one hundred years of use of Joseph Street Cemetery, the Congregation grew concerned that the Cemetery was running out of space for future burials. In 1976, the Congregation briefly considered building a mausoleum as a means to efficiently expand capacity. However, in December 1979, a sense of urgency resulted in the board's motion to “survey and probe as necessary to map out available plots at the Joseph Street cemetery.” In January 1980, a presentation by cemetery chair Neil Wolfson showed the available land there. In May 1980, a special meeting approved a motion made by Marion Lake and seconded by JL Fischman that recommended: “the ‘Yellow Fever’ area in the Joseph Street Cemetery [in this case, referring to a section of old graves towards the rear of the mid cemetery, now known as Section B] be re-arranged and that it be made into a Memorial Park area - with no copings or headstones - only flat nameplates [are to be] used…”
A committee chaired by Dr. J.L Fishman and Sam Kancher, both of whom had served as presidents of the Congregation, explored the options and eventually decided on a solution that was presented in the June 22, 1981 minutes: “The ground has been checked and there are no indications that any remains are at these gravesites. The ground will then be remeasured and set up into gravesites for future use.”
After the approval of the local Rabbinical Council, workers began the removal of at least 124 headstones from the first thirteen rows of Section B. Seventy-four of the 124 removed stones were placed in three rows near the fence at the Arabella Street edge of the Cemetery. The remaining 50 headstones were placed in Section B, row 16, where other headstones and interments already existed. Then, the first rows of Section B were renumbered, and the area was renamed as the “Memorial Area.” A small plaque entitled “Lest We Forget” was installed in plot 14 of Section B, row 01, to commemorate the establishment of the Memorial Area in 1983.
This memorial plaque marks the creation of the Memorial Area of Joseph St Cemetery, in Section B, Row 1, plot 14.
The first burial in the new Memorial Area occurred in 1986.
The Joseph St Cemetery contains some of the oldest Jewish headstones in the city. These are amongst dozens moved in the early 1980s from the original graves to where they currently stand within the Joseph Street Cemetery near their original “Section B” location. This was part of the re-dedication of an old part of the cemetery, which was undertaken with the permission of the Rabbinic Council of the city, and created an area for contemporary and continued use, known as “The Memorial Area.”
The Touro Infirmary Cemetery
A recently rediscovered side note has revealed an interesting and forgotten aspect regarding a Joseph Street Cemetery section. It involves a strip of land the full depth of the Cemetery along Pitt Street, close to the corner now well known for the presence of Langenstein's Market. When questioned in 2020, CGoP members and staff, including those with decades of history or service to CGoP and its cemeteries, believed this to be a “Yellow Fever” section of the Cemetery. While the section was used for that purpose, especially in the 1853 epidemic, it cannot be authoritatively ruled out. It is now clear that the section had another noble purpose in the late 1800s into the first third of the 1900s. We owe this refound knowledge to the research of former Touro Infirmary archivist Florence Jumonville[1].
Touro Infirmary, a well-known and historically Jewish hospital, which was located in Uptown New Orleans, initially opened in 1852 in what would now be called downtown New Orleans. According to the historical plaque that marks the site, New Orleans philanthropist Judah Touro purchased the Paulding Mansion on Gaienne and Old Levee Streets and converted it into a twenty-eight-bed hospital to serve “the seaman, immigrants, slaves and the indigent of all races and religions.”
It operated in that location, including during the Civil War, until 1882, when the new Touro Infirmary building was erected further upriver (“Uptown”) at Prytania and Aline Streets. Touro Infirmary had merged in 1874 with a local Jewish charity organization called the Hebrew Benevolent Association, which dates to 1844. With their new facilities, they experienced an increase in what historical records refer to as “pay” patients, in addition to continuing substantial charity work serving the Jewish and secular communities.
Touro Infirmary Section of Joseph Street Cemetery, along Pitt Street. Knowledge of the arrangement between Gates of Prayer and Touro Infirmary for Touro’s use of and responsibility for this section of Joseph Street Cemetery had been lost from institutional knowledge of the current congregational members and leadership, until the history by Dr. Jumonville, Touro’s Archivist, surfaced in 2020. Many headstones and markers are missing, broken or in poor repair, along with large empty spots where numbered markers of charitable interments likely once rested.
Many of Touro’s patients continued to be immigrants who arrived in the City via ship on the nearby Mississippi River docks. Often in poor health or challenged by the area’s living conditions, many immigrants and local citizens sought refuge from illness and death at Touro, where they were cared for, in some cases, until their death. Many of the deceased lacked resources or family to take responsibility for their burial, leaving Touro to ask cemeteries across New Orleans to provide burial sites for a substantial number of unfortunate indigents. According to the research of Jumonville: “Joseph Magner, a founder and acting secretary of the Touro Infirmary and Hebrew Benevolent Association and a founder of the Jewish Widows and Orphans’ Home, explained in 1889: ‘Owing to the difficulties we experienced for many years in the burying of our dead at the several cemeteries, the Board thought it expedient to procure a proper place for that purpose, and through the efforts of our president we obtained a large space of ground in the cemetery of the Gates of Prayer Congregation, which has been properly laid out at an expense of $652.96 to the society, and the evil under which we have been suffering on that score is now remedied.’”
The arrangement was for the use of the strip of Cemetery previously described along Pitt Street. A recent review of congregational minutes from the 1880s well into the 20th century confirms frequent references to the Touro area, suggesting that the institutional memory of this arrangement was apparently lost between generations in the mid 20th century. It is understandable how this somewhat neglected and disheveled edge of the Cemetery, with a handful of intact or recognizable graves, came to be regarded by contemporaries of Gates of Prayer as the “yellow fever” section.
It was only when Jumonville’s research surfaced in 2020 that the true usage as the “Touro Infirmary Cemetery” was rediscovered. Still, to date, the legal nature of this arrangement between Congregation Gates of Prayer and Touro Infirmary remains unknown (2021).
Touro records indicate that section was used for approximately 155 “charitable interments” of local deceased Jewish persons between 1888 and 1908, many deceased recent immigrants. In those twenty years, Touro used at least four other local Jewish and non-Jewish cemeteries for this same purpose concurrently. According to Jumonville, the first two burials in “The Touro Infirmary Cemetery” in 1888 were Isaac Weis, a thirty-four-year-old peddler from Austria, and Mrs. B. Levi, a forty-seven-year-old housewife from Bavaria. No headstones remain today for either of these persons, which appear to have been marked like most graves in this section simply by a numbered granite block. Only a few such markers remain visible today in the section.
Marker 118 is one of the few remaining numbered markers in the Touro Infirmary section. These simple numbered stones were all that marked the majority of the 155 graves, which were predominantly indigents, buried in the Touro Infirmary Section between 1888 and 1908. Although Touro records identify 117 of the individuals, the exact location of most of the graves is no longer known.
In 1908, use of the “Touro” section and the name by which it was referred appeared to have changed. It became known as the “Julius Weis Home Cemetery,” after the Julius Weis Home for the Aged and Infirm. The home was operated by and located next to Touro Infirmary from 1898 up until the 1930s. However, it did exist as the “New Orleans Home for Jewish Widows and Orphans” from 1855 to 1898.
Entries in the Congregation’s Death Ledger indicate that as early as 1900, some interments were accepted into other sections of Joseph Street for persons from Touro Infirmary and the Julius Weis Home. This included some who had gone through both Touro and the Weis Home. One such example is “Julius Meyering,” who died on April 24, 1902, and is buried at C-01-02. This seems to imply that the deceased from Touro Infirmary or the Julius Weis Home who could afford and were eligible for a plot were buried in the Cemetery in a section like A or C, while those who could not afford a plot were buried in the “Touro” section.
In 1932, Touro began to question its obligation for the Cemetery indicating that it “should be the responsibility of the Jewish Federation and not of Touro Infirmary.” However, “…a letter from Dr. Fichman of the Jewish Charitable and Educational Federation… declined to accept responsibility for the care of the cemetery plot of the former Julius Weis Home, as [had been] suggested…” Not pleased by this rejection from the Federation, the Touro Cemetery Committee “…recommended that Touro Infirmary refuse to accept any further responsibility for care of Plots in Gates of Prayer Cemetery… [and] requested [its secretary] to notify the Gates of Prayer Congregation.” In essence, Touro walked away from its Cemetery. With this, Congregation Gates of Prayer took control of the “Touro” section once again, burying some of its members there from 1932 until 1968, after which we have no record of subsequent burials.
Tue, April 16 2024
8 Nisan 5784
