Saint Louis Cathedral
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The Saint Louis Cathedral is an iconic fixture of the New Orleans landscape. The present structure is at least the third building to serve as a Catholic church here since the French occupied the territory in 1718. In 2024, three hundred years after the first permanent structure was erected on the site, the building needed serious renovations. The Archdiocese contacted the University of New Orleans’s (UNO) Department of Anthropology during test excavations along the Cathedral’s foundation meant to inform those plans.
Dr. Ryan Gray from UNO led a team of students and volunteers to expose the centuries of history accumulated in layers across the site. The team found Indigenous, French, Spanish, and English pottery, beads and elements from religious medals, straight pins that fastened muslin cloth to the windows to allow light into the building before glass was available in the colony, stained glass fragments, and other artifacts from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
At the time of this writing, UNO is still processing artifacts from the series of excavations. Please look for updates from our future website (www.gnoarch.com) expected to go live in Summer of 2024.
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Saint Louis Cathedral. | Source: Photograph by D. Ryan Gray. | Date: January 2024
Plan de la Nouvelle Orléans (Gonichon 1731).
This French colonial plan of the city shows the location of what became Saint Louis Cathedral as letter “A”. This map illustrates the first permanent masonry structure on the site, constructed between 1724 -1727. The church was expanded during Spanish rule in 1769. Unfortunately, the “Good Friday fire” of 1788 destroyed the church and surrounding city. Plans for the new church began in 1789 in the same location, and the structure, officially designated as a cathedral in 1793, was completed by 1794. The second great fire of 1794 narrowly missed destroying the new Cathedral, and the first mass was held there on Christmas Eve, 1794. Modifications continued in the American period. In 1819, Benjamin Latrobe designed the addition of the bell tower to the structure. In 1849-1851, the cathedral was reconstructed almost completely, expanding to its contemporary appearance. | Source: Courtesy of the Historic New Orleans Collection.
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Photogrammetric rendering of excavation area showing the extant foundations of Saint Louis Cathedral, as well as a pier that was likely from the original 1724 structure. The black stains along the brick on the wall on the photograph’s left hand side are burn marks from the 1788 fire. | Source: Image by Noah Fulmer. | Date: January 2024
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Emily Gallo, a University of New Orleans graduate student, excavating what had been the herringbone floor of the reconstructed Cathedral in 1794. | Source: Photograph by D. Ryan Gray. | Date: January 2024