St Anthony's Garden behind St. Louis Cathedral has existed since 1831. The Sacred Heart of Jesus statue, also known locally as “Touchdown Jesus,” was placed there in 1926. The Merilh family donated the statue, which was sculpted in Italy and has become one of the most photographed statues in the city. The statue famously lost several of its fingers in Hurricane Katrina but was restored in 2015.
The six-foot-tall white marble obelisk, topped by a draped Grecian urn, is a memorial to members of the crew of the French warship Tonnerre (French for “thunder”). The sailors died of yellow fever in August 1857, while being treated at a quarantine station near the mouth of the Mississippi River.
The monument was erected in 1859 at the cemetery near the quarantine station, where 19 of the sailors were buried. Their names — as well as those of 11 others who died in Mexico, Havana and at sea — are inscribed on the base of the obelisk. Also inscribed there, in French, are the words: "To the memory of thirty seamen, members of the crew of the Steam Corvette the Thunder of the French Imperial Navy, who died at the Quarantine of New Orleans, in August 1857."
After a hurricane toppled it from its original location, the monument was moved to its present spot in 1914. The remains of the 19 sailors were exhumed and interred in a vault under the monument.
At night a light casts a shadow on the statue and the shadow is displayed on the back of the Saint Louis Cathedral. 
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