Illustration of a woman in a red and black costume with a heart motif. She stands in front of a large red heart background, holding a ribboned staff and wearing a pointed hat. The style is vintage and theatrical.

Blue Books

Visitors to Storyville navigated the red-light district with help from these illustrated guides.

Blue Books

Visitors to Storyville navigated the red-light district with help from these illustrated guides.

Directories to houses of prostitution in New Orleans's infamous Storyville red-light district are collectively called blue books. Storyville—named for Alderman Sidney Story, who sponsored legislation to confine prostitution to a designated part of the city—occupied an area just north of the French Quarter, the site of today’s Iberville public housing development.

Advertisements for White Label Ale (verso) and a ball at Odd Fellows Hall, from Blue Book, 1905. HNOC, 77-2346-RL

During Storyville’s 20-year existence, from 1898 to 1917, many editions of Blue Book were issued, listing prostitutes by race and address; however, the guides among the Historic New Orleans Collection’s holdings contain no descriptions of specific sexual services and no fees.

Description advertising Miss Ada Hayes (verso) and a list of prostitutes (recto), from Blue Book, 1905. HNOC, 77-2346-RL

They do contain advertisements for other services and products, such as restaurants, quack cures for venereal diseases, liquors, and cigars. Most editions also include a warning that the guides “must not be mailed” because regulations banned the distribution of suggestive materials through the United States Postal Service. Blue books were sold to men as they stepped off trains at Basin Street or were available in barbershops and saloons.

Although many were distributed, authentic editions are scarce today.

Pages from Blue Book, between 1913 and 1915, attributed to William Struve, compiler and publisher. HNOC, 77-2346-RL

The HNOC currently holds 23 copies of various blue books spanning 1898–1915. The earliest in our collection is a directory of women who worked at Lulu White’s New Mahogany Hall, comprising 22 pages full of images and profiles of employees, including White. The foundation of HNOC’s collection consists of 13 different editions and titles that we acquired in 1969. They once belonged to rare-book dealer Charles F. Heartman, who privately printed a bibliography of blue books in 1936.

In 2016 HNOC published Guidebooks to Sin: The Blue Books of Storyville, New Orleans, the first contemporary survey of these bygone periodicals.