[Louisiana Cemeteries] Historic Chalmette National Cemetery gets help after Katrina Feb. 2009
- From: Louisiana Cemeteries <louisianacemeteries@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: louisianacemeteries@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Post RootsWeb <la-cemetery-preservation@xxxxxxxxxxxx>, LouisianaCemeteryPreservation Yahoo Group <LouisianaCemeteryPreservation@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Topica Louisiana Cemetery Preservation List <LACEMETERYPRESERVATION@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 21:02:50 -0800 (PST)
Historic Chalmette National Cemetery returning to life
http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/02/by_st_bernard_bureau_as.html
by Chris Kirkham, The Times-Picayune
Sunday February 15, 2009, 7:07 PM
Eliot Kamenitz / The Times-Picayune Workers sort through bricks and paint
ornamental iron work at the Chalmette National Cemetery on Feb. 3. The cemetery
was badly damaged after Hurricane Katrina, and restoration work is finally
underway.
As the floodwaters receded from Chalmette National Cemetery in 2005, employees
of the National Park Service confronted a grim scene: Storm surges from
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita had toppled sections of a historic red-brick wall
lining the site, 140-year-old gravestones lay in pieces and soldiers' bones had
surfaced from below.
After more than two years of meticulous planning by architects and
preservationists, work is underway to restore the Civil War-era cemetery. A
curious niche of historic-preservation contractors has descended on the site to
undertake the largest-ever repair of a national cemetery.
The goal is to mimic the exact look of the graves and the cemetery wall before
the hurricane damage -- even down to refashioning the exact red bricks and gray
mortar in the two half-mile walls lining the gravestones.
"We're doing this with the highest degree of historical accuracy we can
achieve, to preserve a national treasure," said Brian Strack, the facility
manager for Jean Lafitte National Historical Park, which oversees the cemetery
and adjacent Chalmette Battlefield.
The cemetery and the road leading to it will remain closed during repairs. The
battlefield and the Malus-Beauregard House, built in the 1830s and repaired
after Katrina, remain open.
Although the cemetery is next to Chalmette Battlefield, the location of Gen.
Andrew Jackson's triumph over the British in the last battle of the War of
1812, it is primarily a Civil War cemetery. Only one soldier who fought in the
Battle of New Orleans is buried at Chalmette, moved there in the early 1900s
from a local cemetery in Pike County, Miss., where he had died.
The cemetery is the final resting place of Sara Rosetta Wakeman, who was famous
for posing as a man to fight against the Confederates, and more than 100 black
soldiers who fought for the Union as the Louisiana Native Guard.
Veterans and their families from all major wars from the Civil War through the
Vietnam War are buried in the national cemetery.
Shattered grave markers
Since November, crews have been working to piece together 74 gravestones
smashed by fallen trees during Katrina. The National Park Service conducted a
detailed inventory of the more than 15,000 grave markers on the site beginning
in 2006, noting which had been broken and needed repair.
Workers from Pishny Restoration Services, a Kansas company, then started the
sensitive process of tying each headstone back together with a steel rod and
patching the cracks with a glue-like substance meant to match the exact marble
color of the gravestone.
Some of the stones date as far back as 1868, when the cemetery opened, forcing
workers to be especially careful when drilling into the deteriorating marble
stones.
"Some of those were like the consistency of a sugar cube," said Corey Thomas,
business development manager with Pishny. "You could just scrape it off with
your fingernail."
Some of the most deteriorated stones had to be filled with a special hardening
material that seeps into the marker's hollow spaces to bind it together again.
On others, crews had to re-create inscriptions that been split or cracked.
Putting wall back together
The vast majority of the gravestones have been patched together, but other
contractors are working to rebuild the two red-brick walls lining the graves,
some of which date back to 1870.
The $3.7 million wall restoration is the most expensive post-Katrina project
undertaken in Jean Lafitte National Historical Park, which includes the
Barataria Preserve on the West Bank of Jefferson Parish.
About 15 percent of the wall was knocked down by Katrina, and the National Park
Service sent samples of the bricks to laboratories to learn their exact
strength and makeup. Those results were sent to St. Joe Brick Works Inc., a
Pearl River brick-making company that uses old-fashioned wooden molds to create
custom bricks for projects such as this one.
The company is developing a test batch for the battlefield wall, firing the
kiln at different temperatures to produce a red color that matches the original
bricks.
"Our raw material affords us the opportunity to offer our product for these
restoration jobs, because it is so close to what was used before," said Pete
Schneider, St. Joe Brick president. "We've been able to virtually match every
project according to the National Park Service requirements."
The company is still awaiting a final count of the number of bricks needed for
Chalmette National Cemetery; right now, it is anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000.
Meanwhile, crews are collecting bricks from broken sections of the wall in
hopes of reusing them.
On a recent rainy morning, seven workers from WW Masonry Restoration and
Waterproofing were chiseling away at a load of bricks in a nearby warehouse to
remove old mortar. The cleaned bricks were stacked and repackaged to be used
when the new walls are built.
The plan is to use as many of the old bricks as possible above the ground. Most
of the new bricks will be laid as part of the foundation, which goes 3 feet
underground. Even the mortar must be a precise match, and contractors are
choosing among several different shades.
In the next few months, workers will construct a sample section of the wall for
review by the National Park Service. If it is up to par, they will proceed with
the rest of the 1,600 feet of wall that needs replacement.
If not, it is back to square one.
The entire cemetery restoration project, which includes repairs to the
superintendent's lodge and the carriage house, is slated for completion in
January.
Chris Kirkham can be reached at ckirkham@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx or 504.826.3321.
Photographs in files on wiki
chalmettenational.jpg
chalmettemap.jpg
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