Storyville, New Orleans Red-Light District 1897-1917

Time 2021-01-01 21:06:15

Web Name: Storyville, New Orleans Red-Light District 1897-1917

WebSite: http://www.storyvilledistrictnola.com

ID:153404

Keywords:

Orleans,Red,Storyville,

Description:

Basin Street was the scarlet thread through New Orleans, the principal artery of the red-light district, for almost a half-century.All illegal (but highly profitable) activities were moved into a restricted district along Basin Street, next door to the French Quarter. Quickly nicknamed Storyville, the district boasted fancy "sporting palaces" with elaborate decor, musical entertainment, and a wide variety of ladies of pleasure. Visitors and residents could purchase a directory (the Blue Book) that listed alphabetically the names, addresses, and races of more than 700 prostitutes, ranging from those in the "palaces" to the poorer inhabitants of wretched, decaying shacks (called "cribs") on the blocks behind Basin Street. Black musicians like Jelly Roll Morton played the earliest form of jazz in some of Basin Street's ornate bordellos. Although jazz predates Storyville, here it gained popularity before moving upriver and into record collections everywhere. When the secretary of the navy decreed in 1917 that armed forces should not be exposed to so much open vice, Storyville closed down and disappeared without a trace. None of the fancy sporting houses remain.You ever been in New Orleans? If not you'd better go. It's a nation of a queer place; day and night a show! Frenchmen, Spaniards, West Indians, Creoles, Mustees, Yankees, Kentuckians, Tennesseans, lawyers and trustees,Ships, arks, steamboats, robbers, pirates, alligators,Assassins, gamblers, drunkards, and cotton speculators;Sailors, soldiers, pretty girls, and ugly fortune-tellers;Pimps, imps, shrimps, and all sorts of dirty fellows;A progeny of all colors and infernal motley crew;Yellow fever in February muddy streets all the year;Many things to hope for, and a devilish sight to fear!Gold and silver bullion, United States bank notes,Horse-racers, cock-fighters, and beggars without coats,Snapping-turtles, sugar, sugar-houses, water-snakes,Molasses, flour, whiskey, tobacco, corn and johnny-cakes,Beef, cattle, hogs, pork, turkeys, Kentucky rifles,Lumber, boards, apples, cotton, and many other trifles.Butter, cheese, onions, wild beasts in wooden cages,Barbers, waiters, draymen, with the highest sort of wages.This was written more than a hundred years ago, when New Orleans had already passed its first century mark, by one Colonel Creecy, a man of parts and of gusto.Early 1800'sAlligators, to be sure, are now seldom encountered outside of curio stores; but sailors and pretty girls, horse-racers and cock-fighters are always at large, to say nothing of the pimps and the imps and the shrimps. And there are the Mardi Gras, the French Quarter, the cemeteries above ground, the river, the lake, the food, and the drinks.Traditionally the city that care forgot, New Orleans is, perhaps, best known for its liberal attitude toward human frailties, its 'Live and Let Live' policy. To the tourist the city is first of all a place in which to eat, drink, and be merry. Generations of gourmands and tipplers have waxed fat on gumbo and bouillabaisse and pompano, and gay on gin fizzes and absinthe drips and Sazerac cocktails; many of them, Thackeray and Mark Twain included, have communicated their appreciation of the 'American Paris' to the world. Generations of revelers have gone their joyous way through Carnival Season to Mardi Gras, that maddest of all mad days when every man may be a king, or, if he prefers, a tramp or a clown or an Indian chief, and dance in the streets. Generations of dandies and sports adventurers have, with their 'ladies,' played fast and loose in the gambling-houses and 'sporting' houses of the 'American Marseilles.' Ever since the middle of the eighteenth century, when the Marquis de Vaudreuil attempted to set up in Nouvelle Orleans a miniature Versailles, a reputation for gaiety and abandon has persisted. These, then, the joys of the flesh, the traveler first remembers.Storyville, New Orleans Red-Light District 1897-1917

TAGS:Orleans Red Storyville 

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Storyville, New Orleans Red-Light District 1897-1917, Basin Street, Gateway to Storyville, New Orleans, extenstive historical content.

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