War has a curious way of changing established societal standards. The threat of death makes things that would be seen as lewd or vulgar take on a different light. It’s not that people change their minds out of the blue, but instead they choose to ignore certain aspects they’d normally look down on. Sex is one of the taboos that seem to shift when there’s an overpowering violence and destruction.
During the American Civil War, many women resorted to prostitution as a way of supporting themselves while their husbands were away. According to historian Catherine Clinton, “In 1864 there were 450 brothels in Washington, and over 75 brothels in nearby Alexandria, Virginia. A newspaper estimated there were 5,000 public women in the District and another 2,500 in Alexandria and Georgetown, bringing the total to 7,500 by the war’s third year.” After the war, with so many of the men lost to the conflict, many of the wives and female family members who depended on these soldiers to survive ended up working as “Public Women” in order to make ends meet.
But at the end of the nineteenth century, the city of New Orleans had become synonymous with vices and sex. Prostitution was not legal, but it was also not as frowned upon as in other cities. When Louisiana was still a French colony in the eighteenth century, the French King sent 80 women by ship to marry the men in the colony. Unlike the casket girls who were also sent for the same purpose, many of these women had been sex workers prior to their arrival to the New World. In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, brothel madams and sex workers had a slight celebrity around town. Other women would up look at them as fashionistas. They had knowledge and freedom “respectable” women were not allowed to have.
In 1897 New Orleans Alderman Sidney Story proposed an ordinance to seclude brothels to a particular sixteen block district next to the French Quarter. It was done in an effort to control the proliferation of drugs and other illegal activities, as well as to create a “cleaner” image of the city. This red light district was nicknamed as Storyville because of that city official. Some have said that this mandate did not make prostitution legal in this area, but more specifically made it illegal outside of the district.
Still, as with many clandestine spots, Storyville allowed for an easing of social laws and perceptions. Despite Jim Crow segregation laws being the norm in the American South in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the district seemed to forgo those ideas. Several women of color owned parlors and octoroons, term used to define a person who was 1/8 black, which were usually the most sought after ladies. However, it wasn’t all that progressive. White men were allowed to frequent brothels of black women, but black men were not allowed to enter houses with white women.
The houses that filled Storyville were opulent and beautifully decorated. There were oil paintings on the walls and indoor water closets. While it existed, this district was quite profitable, earning a million dollars of the time a month. Authorities purposely looked the other way and received a cut of the earnings.
In 1917, with the United States about to deploy troops to the First World War, President Woodrow Wilson and Secretary of War Newton Baker forced the city to shut down Storyville in order to avoid distractions for the young men about to be sent to fight abroad. Authorities were no longer able to turn a blind eye to illicit activities and the houses were vacated. In the forties the buildings from the district were torn down in an effort to erase memory of the past.
However, they say that if you ask a Nola native to point you towards Storyville, they’ll tell you how to reach the place that once housed wild nights of jazz, sex, and beauty.
You can hear more about this infamous site here.
