St. Peter Street Cemetery
The St. Peter Street Cemetery was one of the city’s first formal burial grounds, eventually occupying the entirety of the city block bounded by N. Rampart, St. Peter, Burgundy, and Toulouse Streets. It is shown on maps by the mid-1720s, and, even though it was formally closed in 1789, it remained in use into the 1790s. The block was subdivided and sold for development around 1800, but, because of disagreements over ownership between the Catholic Church and the Cabildo, or city government, it appears that few if any of those interred in the cemetery were moved before new construction began. Over the years, human remains have been discovered numerous times on the block, often with little documentation of what happened to them afterwards.