Storyville

This article is about the New Orleans district. For other things named "Storyville" see Storyville (disambiguation).

One of the few surviving buildings from Storyville, 2005 photograph. 100 years earlier, the "New Image Supermarket" building housed Frank Early's saloon, where Tony Jackson regularly played.

Storyville was the red-light district of New Orleans, Louisiana, from 1897 through 1917. Locals usually simply referred to the area as The District.

History

The nickname Storyville was in reference to city alderman Sidney Story, who wrote the legislation setting up the district. It was bounded by Iberville, Basin, St. Louis, and N. Robertson streets. Most of this former district is now occupied by the Iberville Housing Projects, two blocks inland from the French Quarter.

The District was set up to limit prostitution to one area of town where authorities could monitor and regulate the practice. In the late 1890s, the New Orleans city government studied the legalized red light districts of northern German and Dutch ports and set up Storyville based on such models. Between 1895 and 1915, "blue books" were published in Storyville. These books were guides to prostitution for visitors to the district's services including house descriptions, prices, particular services and the "stock" each house had to offer. The Storyville blue-books were inscribed with the motto: "Order of the Garter: Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense (Shame to Him Who Evil Thinks)."

Establishments in Storyville ranged from cheap "cribs" to more expensive houses up to a row of elegant mansions along Basin Street for well-heeled customers. New Orleans' cribs were 50-cent joints, whereas the more expensive establishments could cost up to $10. Black and white brothels coexisted in Storyville; however, black men were barred from legally purchasing services rendered in either black or white brothels. Nonetheless, brothels with black prostitutes serving blacks openly flourished with the full knowledge of the police and other local authorities a short distance uptown from Storyville proper.^{[citation needed]}

The District was adjacent to one of the main railway stations where travelers arrived in the city and became a noted attraction.

Jazz did not originate in Storyville (it started off as a New Orleans style of music played all over town), but it flourished there as in the rest of the city. Many out-of-town visitors first heard this style of music there before the music spread north. Some people from elsewhere continue to associate Storyville with the origins of jazz. It was tradition in the better Storyville establishments to hire a piano player and sometimes small bands.

Closure

The US Army, driven by a reformist attitude at home, had an intolerance for prostitution on the basis of public health. In October 1917, shortly after the United States entered World War I, Secretary of War Newton D. Baker said:

“

These boys are going to France. I want them adequately armed and clothed by their government; but I want them to have an invisible armor to take with them . . . a moral and intellectual armor for their protection overseas.

”

Aided by the campaigns of the American Social Hygiene Organization, and with army regulations that placed such institutes off limits, he implemented a national programme to close so called segregated zones close to Army training camps.

In the early days of conflict, four soldiers were killed within the District within weeks of each other. Both the Army and Navy subsequently demanded that Storyville be closed down, with the Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels citing the district as a "bad influence".

The closure was over the strong objections of the New Orleans city government; New Orleans Mayor Martin Behrman pronounced that, "[y]ou can make [prostitution] illegal, but you can't make it unpopular." After 1917, when Storyville was shut down, separate black and white underground dens of prostitution emerged around the city.

The District continued in a more subdued state as an entertainment center through the 1920s, with various dance halls, cabarets and restaurants. Speakeasies, gambling joints and prostitution were also regularly found in the area despite repeated police raids.

Today

Almost all the buildings in the former District were demolished in the 1930s to clear the land for the building of the Iberville Projects. While much of the area contained old and decayed buildings, the old mansions along Basin Street, some of the finest structures in the city, were also leveled. The city government wished to do all it could to blot the notorious district from memory. Basin Street was even renamed "North Saratoga" (although the historic name was restored some 20 years later).

William J. Toye painted several paintings of Storyville, which were ruined less than two weeks before he was to exhibit them in 1969. A collection of photographs by E. J. Bellocq depicting Storyville prostitutes was published in 1971 under the title Storyville Portraits.

Films with fictional portrayals of Storyville have included New Orleans (1947), Pretty Baby (1978), and Storyville (1992).

Famous Persons Connected with Storyville

Advertising flyer for Tony Jackson, ca. 1910

• Tom Anderson, Louisiana state legislator
• Josie Arlington, brothel madam
• Louis Armstrong, musician and composer
• E. J. Bellocq, photographer
• Buddy Bolden, seminal jazz musician
• Hilma Burt, brothel madam
• Ann Cook, blues singer
• Hattie Hamilton, brothel madam
• Tony Jackson, musician
• Frank Lamothe, promoter
• Gertie Livingston, brothel madam
• Jelly Roll Morton, musician and composer
• Jimmie Noone, musician
• Joe "King" Oliver, musician
• Al Rose, author
• May Tuckerman, brothel madam
• Lulu White, brothel madam
• Minnie White, brothel madam
• Pops Foster, jazz musician

See also

• Free State of Galveston
• New Orleans, a film (1947)
• Omaha Sporting District
• San Antonio Sporting District

References

• Storyville, New Orleans by Al Rose, University of Alabama Press, 1978. ISBN 0-8173-4403-9

• The Great Southern Babylon by Alecia P. Long, Louisiana State University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8071-2932-1
• Rosen, Ruth (1982). The Lost Sisterhood: Prostitution in America, 1900-1918. The Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 80–81. ISBN 0-8018-2665-9.