Charity Hospital Cemetery No. 2

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By some estimates, nearly 50,000 burials lie beneath Canal Boulevard, originally Charity Hospital Cemetery No. 2. Almost forgotten since Canal Boulevard's addition to the city's roadways in 1937, road crews rediscovered the cemetery when they added a south-bound lane to Canal Boulevard in the 1980s. They called University of New Orleans to quickly protect the remaining burials with by exhuming approximately 157 burials that would have been damaged by the road expansion had they been left in situ.

The city again modified its underground streetscape along Canal Boulevard in the early 2000s by planning an extension to the Canal Street streetcar. New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (RTA) consulted with a private Cultural Resource Management, Earth Search, Inc. and Louisiana State University's (LSU) Forensic Anthropology and Computer Enhancement Services (FACES) to mitigate the damage by exhuming and processing the burials and human remains from Charity Hospital Cemetery No. 2 that might have been disturbed during the course of this work.

Visit the other two stops in the Charity Hospital Cemetery No. 2 tour to learn more about these two excavations.