Treme Tuesday: Our Lady of Guadalupe Church

Since HBO's hit series, Treme " has concluded its first season, we'll be featuring photos of Faubourg Treme as well as various places around New Orleans that pop up in the show.

Interior of Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in the 1930s.  Originally named for St. Anthony, this church is located at Conti and N. Rampart Streets, in the Treme.  The church was built as a mortuary chapel for the city in the 1820s.  It's location, one block down from St. Louis Cemetery Number One, was outside the French Quarter, so funerals of victims of yellow fever could be held away from St. Louis Cathedral and the general population of the city.  As the city grew, OLG became the parish church for Treme near Canal Street (St. Augustine was the church for the Esplanade side of the neighborhood).

This shot of the church features two well-known statues positioned to the right of the main altar.  The big St. Jude statue (left) was moved into the side chapel to the left of the altar.  It's now the International Shrine of St. Jude, and one of the most peaceful and spiritual places you'll ever encounter.  The statue in the niche on the wall just to the right in the photo is labeled "St. Expedit," and is one of the more amusing stories in New Orleans history.  In the early 19th century, New Orleanians would order statuary for their churches from the old countries.  One of the boxes contained the statue of an early church martyr in a Roman military uniform that couldn't be identified.  The workers who unpacked the statue saw the word "EXPEDIT" stenciled on the box and assumed that was the saint's name. 

The rest, as they say, is New Orleans.