Moving the remains in this way makes room for the remains of the corpse to be buried. By local tradition, the tombs cannot be opened in this way for at least one year and one day, the belief being that this allows for adequate decomposition of the previous corpse. Following appropriate funerary ritual, the cemetery sexton again walls off the vault opening with brick and replaces the tablet. Generally the names of the deceased and their birth dates and death dates are chiseled onto the tablet or alternatively elsewhere on the tomb. The above-ground tombs are generally not air-tight, so that suitable gas exchange can occur for decomposition of the corpse. The tradition of waiting one year and one day between openings of the tomb was not always sufficient for adequate decomposition, even under the harsh conditions of the climate of New Orleans. These burial practices continue in contemporary times. By the early 19th century, as above-ground tombs became more common in New Orleans, tomb design reflected the Roman influences extensively used in European cemeteries at the time. Ancient Romans believed that the afterlife began at the tomb, and so suitable homage was to be paid to the dead in their final resting places. For these reasons, early above-ground tomb design was typically of brick, much larger than the casket with suitable ornamentation for homage. Columbaria began to appear in tomb design in New Orleans in the early 19th century. These are walled structures with chambers or niches for individual burials in close proximity, thereby lowering burial costs. People of modest means could not afford elaborate tomb structures and so they pooled their resources to construct columbaria, enabling burial of the remains of multiple people. These could be as caskets or of their ashes in urns. Benevolent associations often constructed the columbaria. As the city of New Orleans continued to grow rapidly in the early 19th century, the need for burial of large numbers of people of modest means came about. To address this need, oven tombs were built in cemeteries such as St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. In these designs, vaults or crypts or niches are built into a wall of a cemetery or in an above ground tomb. The corpse is placed into the vault. In the hot, subtropical climate of New Orleans, the corpse decomposes relatively rapidly so that after approximately a year, only bones remain. After that time, the bones or other remains are moved, typically to the ground in the oven tomb, making room for burial of newly deceased in the vacated vault.