The Red Light District of New Orleans

Established in 1897, Storyville was a legal twenty block red-light district in New Orleans. Tune in as Katie and Candace take a look at the colorful history of New Orleans' infamous prostitution district in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor kend Kanor, joined as always by fellow editor
Katie Lambert. Hey, Candice, Hey there, Katie. We have got

(00:21):
a special request today that came in from Mallory who
works at the Louisiana State Museum, and she wrote to
us and suggested that we talk about how Storyville worked.
And it's a fascinating suggestion, one that we could not
say no to. But before we launch into our discussion
of New Orleans famous red light district of your I

(00:41):
did want to say that if there are any younger
listeners out there, you may want to put on your
ear muffs. We don't have any salacious information. It is
all based in fact, but perhaps consider the content before
you go any further. That said, here we go. So
Storyville was a legal twin t block red light district
in New Orleans, but it wasn't the first. After the

(01:04):
Civil War that were actually quite a few cities who
were battling with certain areas of vice and after the
Civil War in general and the reconstruction era South and
even in some parts of the North, really um you
have to consider that a lot of men had been
killed at war, women were left widowed and they had
children to care for, and they had to find some

(01:26):
way to get by, and women work and family in
the Antebella Mountains, South Wilma A. Dunaway explains that prostitution
was actually a type of honest work because it was
a job. It wasn't begging, so women could actually support
themselves and their children instead of relying on the community
for handouts. And an interesting thing about New Orleans was

(01:47):
that in seventeen one, King Louis fourteen actually sent convicted
Parisian prostitute to Louisiana. And you have to put yourself
back in time to think about Louisiana for what it was,
as it was a swampy and mosquito ridden place that
a lot of people were not enthusiastic to go to.
So he figured he would excommunicate these women and there

(02:08):
would at least be women in the colony to be
fruitful and multiply. And if you keep up with the
stuff you missed in history class blog, this may sound
like a somewhat familiar plan because this was the same
Louis he had the feed raw who went to Canada
to be fruitful multiply there. So I know it's that's
such a great way of getting women to these new

(02:30):
territories that you own ums and the prostitutes and the
young marriable ones. It worked, except that New Orleans became
sort of nationally recognized as a city of vice. So
in Alderman Sydney story suggested Ordinance number thirteen thousand, thirty
two in seven he thought he was doing something good

(02:51):
by controlling vice by putting one area of the city
and setting that apart for certain unsavory activities, because is
that sort of thing was running rampant in New Orleans,
and he thought if he put all the prostitutes in
a twenty block area that that would save the rest
of the city. And he was devastated when they called
its Storyville sort of sellied his good name there, a

(03:14):
good man with the plan. But the ordinance actually didn't
make prostitution legal in that area. It just made it
illegal everywhere else. So it was a tricky little way
of getting that through. And in the Encyclopedia of Prostitution
and Sex Work, yes there's such a book, well as
the Hope did More explains and this is a direct
quote I had to share with you. The district was

(03:35):
famous for its extravagant bordellos, its jazz music, and its
promotion of interracial sex and octoroon prostitutes at the beginning
of the Jim Crow era. And ultimately this would be
the downfall of Storyville, or one of the downfalls, because
it was a part of the Deep South that was
not honoring the code of Jim Crow laws. You know,

(03:55):
it was where blacks and whites mixed, and people were
very uncomfortable with that. So if we think about the
area of Storyville, and let's put this in a little
bit of context, it was set within i Reville basin St.
Louis and Robertson Streets, and like Katie had mentioned, this
was about eighteen twenties square blocks and it was situated

(04:16):
between the French Quarter and the American section, which was
the business district. And before the end of the rail
line it actually passed through part of story Ville. And
so the women would make themselves very well known by
um displaying their their wares from windows and balconies, and
to Sydney story chagrin. Uh. Instead of keeping prostitution in

(04:38):
a centralized place that was sort of hush hush, it
actually gained a loud and bodied reputation that attracted national attention.
And before Storyville actually became the big thing, the big
part of this district, there was already a motley assortment
of people in business there, and one of the most

(04:59):
famous was George WoT whose lumber company was pretty pretty
profitable and doing pretty well, and he had a wife
and eight children, and he actually followed a lawsuit against
the city to keep Storyville out of his neighborhood. And
this one all the way up to the U. S.
Supreme Court, which ultimately deferred to the City of New Orleans.
But an amendment that moved to include St. Louis Street

(05:22):
as part of the boundaries also established a four block
uptown district. And this, like Kitty was explaining to me earlier,
didn't really take off like Storyville proper did. Basically, Storyville
was white, and they were a couple of brothels that
were racially mixed, but this little four block area was
known as Black Storyville, and that was the blocks between

(05:45):
Predido and Gravier and Locust and Franklin, and there was
quite a bit of crime there lots of fights, lots
of murders, lots of drug addiction, and it wasn't quite
the classy, extravagant bordello's of white Dooryville. Instead, they had cribs,
which were rooms you rented by the hour, honky tonks,
dance halls, most infamously Funky Butt Hall, where Buddy Bolden

(06:09):
Jazz Royalty UM, a schizophrenic cornetist, used to play, and
that is where Louis Armstrong grew up. Interesting bit of trivia.
Well there you go. And as far as Storyville, like
Katy was suggesting, the boardellas that were, there were quite
the things to see. One of the most famous would

(06:29):
have been Lulu White's Mahogany Hall, which costs nearly forty
dollars to build, and if you'll allow a little bit
of give and take care, that would a quate to
about one million, twenty one thousand, ninety nine dollars to
build today, so you can imagine quite the establishment. And
this would have included four stories with um a marble staircase,

(06:53):
fifteen bedrooms and water closets. It's not full on bathrooms,
mind you. And then um, one of the more interesting
sites would have been her room with Florida's ceiling mirrors.
I don't know what that would use though, And I
did enjoy when I was doing research for this reading
about some of the different madam's who were all very

(07:16):
colorful in their way. And there was actually a publication
put out called the Blue Book that listed the different
houses and the different proprietors and maybe some of the
girls that you would see. And this is an excerpt
about Countess Willie Piazza, who is one of the more
famous madam's, said, it is the one place in the

(07:36):
Tenderloin district you can't very well afford to pass up.
The Countess Piazza has made it a study to try
and make everyone jovial who visits her house. If you
have the blues, the Countess and her girls can cure them.
She has, without doubt, the most handsome and intelligent actor
rooms in the United States. You should see them. They're
all cultivated entertainers. If there's anything new in the singing
and dancing line that you'd like to see, well in Storyville,

(07:58):
Countess Piazzas is the play us to visit, especially when
one is hopping out with friends. The women, in particular
the Countess wishes it to be known that while her
Maison Maison jois is peerless in every respect, she only
serves the amber fluid. Just ask for Willie Piazza. And
if you're wondering what an octoroon is, Miriam Webster defined
it as a person of one eighth black ancestry. And

(08:20):
some of the blue books went so far as to
designate what kind of prostitutes you would find at the
different bordellos. So a debut was white, see for colored,
oct for oct roon, and there was also designations for
French and Jewish prostitutes. And going back to miss Piazza,
she was considered to be very cultured and also a
leader of fashion in New Orleans. The country club ladies

(08:42):
would follow her around to see what she was wearing.
She spoke several different languages, had a fantastic library, and
she and Madame Lulu were the only black owners of
brothels in Storyville. And it wasn't unusual for residents of
New Orleans to look toward the demi monde as they
were called for the latest in fashion and prostitutes, with

(09:04):
large leaguers shopping on Sundays, on which days many of
the city's residents and students were worn to stay away
from Canal Street, but they certainly turned some heads because
they were forward thinkers in terms of uh their dresses
and their makeup and accessories, and there were even some
lipstick shades named after them. My other favorite madam I
read about was Helma Bert, who was also known for

(09:26):
being a lady of fashion and jazz musician Jelly Roll
Morton actually got his start in her mansion, and this
is a direct quote from him talking to a historian. Well,
I never made never know night, as I remember, under
a hundred dollars, and it was a very bad night.
When we made under a hundred dollars. Was very often
men would come into the houses and hand you a
twenty or hand you forty or fifty dollar note. It

(09:48):
was just like a match. Wine flowed much more than
water did during those periods. Many of those houses there's
more wine sold than beer. So these establishments were known
for catering to jen entlemen in general. And there is
a bit of a misconception going around that jazz started
in Storyville, when really jazz was more in Black Storyville,
like I'd said, where Louis Armstrong grew up, even if

(10:10):
some of the musicians did get their start over in
white Storyville. But for all the financial success of Storyville,
it was it was built in some inherent contradictions. For instance, UH,
black women and actor and specifically were employed there, but
black men were not allowed to be patrons, and in
fact they were banned, even though there were some black

(10:31):
and white madam's who ran these four delos, and Sydney's
story had gotten his idea for the legalization or jelly say,
the non illegalization of Storyville in this particular district from
uh legalized prostitution quarters that existed in other parts of
the world. But I don't think that anyone in New

(10:51):
Orleans anticipated the kind of national attention that would come
to Storyville and the kind of huge would reputation and
colorful reputation that would overcome the entire city. And so
we have issues of blacks and whites clashing in the South,
which is still very racially divided, and modern theorists who

(11:13):
look back with a critical eye at Storyville talk about
how in a sense that the type of ways in
which a black woman could offer up her body for
sale and reap the benefits were almost somehow redemptive if
you if you look at the idea that slavery benefited
her in no way. She was sold for money and
she worked for a white man, And they're saying that

(11:35):
Storyville sort of turned this premise on its head. She
could use her body as she pleased and read the benefits.
But still this is a very controversial point of view.
And by the same token, uh, white women were also
becoming as just Adams rights and wounds of returning commodified
or potentially commodifiable things. So some people would call this

(11:58):
type of prostitution white slavery. But at least some people
would say, some of the critics I was reading, they
got a cut of the money with some of us.
And Storyville was very lucrative to Lane, and the Archdiocese
of New Orleans actually made quite a bit of money
off Storyville, and according to one estimate, UM, Storyville was
making one million dollars a month. Did you run the

(12:20):
inflation calculator on I did not. You can only imagine
if forty dollars was almost one million dollars today, one
million back then would have been I can't even do
it email um. All joking aside, though eventually along with
the start of World War One, the national government turned

(12:42):
his attention towards story Ville decided that Storyville was to
be no more, and New Orleans Mayor Martin Barriman is
supposedly famous. First thing you can make it it being
prostitution illegal, but you can't make it unpopular. In February
of nineteen seventeen, the City of New Orleans passed a
new ordinance, and this one said that part of Storyville

(13:02):
could only be for white prostitutes. And then we're creating
a totally new part for black prostitutes, which meant that
the houses we talked about before with the Octoroon women
and the black houses would have to move. So my
favorite Countess Willie Piazza looked for an injunction against the
City of New Orleans, and the city wouldn't grant it.

(13:23):
The court wouldn't grant it. They appealed to the Supreme
Court of Louisiana and they wouldn't grant it either, So
her appeal was denied, and it seemed like it was
going to happen, and then the Secretary of War got involved,
and so Woodrow Wilson put his hand down and explained
that any type of establishment or activity which could potentially
cause harm to a young soldier or sailor couldn't exist.

(13:46):
We were entering World War One. We needed all of
the able bodied men that we could spare to go
over and fight, and um allowing prostitution to thrive in
the South was not going to work any longer. And
Orleans had a reputeation of being kind of the Babylon
of the South, some people called it at the time,
so it was a bit like Sodom, and people had

(14:07):
about had it up to there. And that signaled the
end of Storyville, which happened at midnight on November twelfth,
nineteen seventeen. In the nineteen thirties, and an effort to
erase its memories of the past, New Orleans raised Storyville
and put the Iberville Federal Housing Projects in their place,
and I think only three of those buildings remain from

(14:30):
Storyville today. The Mahogany House wasn't able to be saved.
And if you're curious, you can actually pull up Google Maps.
And I entered story of all just for you know,
kids and Googles to see if it would put me
in some sort of reasonable district of where it once stood,
and as far as I could tell it, it did.
So I don't know any New Orleans locals, but um,

(14:50):
I'm sure that if you ask people, they would still
be able to point you in the right direction of
where it once stood and if you have the general boundaries.
Even though the street names were also altered to help
erase the boundaries of once constituted the Prostitution District, I
think it's a memory that New Orleans will will have
for a long time to come. There's a book I
keep trying to locate over the past couple of days

(15:11):
by al Rose, which I think is the most famous
Storyville tail. But I'd take a look at it if
I could find it. I think it's issued by the
University of Alabama Press, so it's a little bit hard
to get your hands on. And the title of the
book is Storyville, New Orleans. So if you want to
learn more about reconstruction, South New Orleans and jazz, please
take a look at the website www dot how stuff

(15:32):
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