Brothels & Music
The fabled mansions of Storyville were mainly clustered along or near Basin Street, facing the Southern Railway line, which terminated at the station on Canal Street. Many of the structures existed prior to the working-class neighborhood’s designation as a vice district, but a few were specially built to be among the most lavish bordellos in the country. The Arlington, Mahogany Hall, and the Star Mansion, among others, were touted as the most costly and elaborately furnished establishments anywhere. Away from Basin Street, the District also contained numerous “cribs,” crude one- or two-room structures, or larger buildings partitioned into small spaces, where women worked in shifts under terrible conditions.
The brothel shown in this photograph overlooked St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. Eunice Deering is listed in the 1905 Blue Book as madam of this establishment. By the publication of the final edition of the guidebook (between 1913 and 1915), W. O. Barrera was the brothel’s madam.
The brothel featured in this photograph has not been identified. It is likely Mahogany Hall at 235 N. Basin, the Arlington at 225 N. Basin, or the mansion at 209 N. Basin, which was managed by three different madams in the Storyville years: Flo Meeker, Hilma Burt, and Gertrude Dix.
The Sex Workers of Storyville
Census records, city directories, vital records, and the blue books themselves help to illustrate the life stories of some of the women who worked in Storyville—particularly those who found success as madams.
Born Mary Anna Deubler in New Orleans, Josie Arlington (1864–1914, first image) escaped extreme poverty to become one of Storyville’s most successful madams. She took the surname Arlington from a fashionable Hot Springs, Arkansas, resort hotel she admired, and she applied the name to her brothel at 225 N. Basin Street. The Arlington is advertised in the 1905 Blue Book as “the most decorative and costly fitted out sporting palace ever placed before the American public.” In October 1906 Josie Arlington left her brothel in the care of her longtime associate, Anna Casey, and moved into a substantial private residence at 2721 Esplanade Avenue. The house was moved to its current location, 2863 Grand Route St. John, around 1922 when the school board purchased the Esplanade land for the construction of McDonogh No. 28 School.
One of Storyville’s most notorious madams, Lulu White (1868–1931, second and third images) presided over one of its most famous brothels, Mahogany Hall at 235 N. Basin, which offered only light-complexioned women of color. White’s nephew Spencer Williams immortalized her mansion in his jazz composition “Mahogany Hall Stomp.” Known as the Diamond Queen (for the diamonds she reportedly wore in excess), White was unmatched in self-promotion. She issued her own souvenir booklets, and her photograph appears in both her own guide, New Mahogany Hall, and The Red Book, though the accuracy of the depictions has been disputed. In New Mahogany Hall her likeness bears a strong resemblance to two other women in the book, and the photograph in The Red Book is of a different woman altogether. The glass transom over the entrance to Mahogany Hall, in which “Lulu White” is emblazoned in amber glass jewels, was one of the mansion’s distinguishing features.
The New Orleans photographer Ernest J. Bellocq (1873–1949) appears to have been most active from about 1900 until about 1920. As a commercial photographer, his subjects included buildings, boats, and industrial machinery, but he is known for his photographs of Storyville’s sex workers, two examples of which are shown here. In the 1950s, following Bellocq's death, a cache of nearly one hundred glass negatives depicting women (both clothed and nude), along with a few interior views, were found among Bellocq’s belongings. New York photographer Lee Friedlander acquired the negatives in 1966 and eventually printed them using methods and materials common in Bellocq’s time. Through museum and gallery exhibitions and a book, the photographs became widely known.
Bellocq’s residences and studio locations were near Storyville, but were not within its boundaries. Just how he came to make the photographs is unclear, but the casual look of the surroundings and the sense of confidence exuded by the subjects, along with the lack of evidence of widespread publishing, suggest this group of pictures had motives that were more personal than commercial.
Music & Musicians
The best brothels featured musicians, typically small string ensembles or piano players—the latter known as “professors” who were the highest earning musicians in the District, bringing in significant nightly tips. Establishments with fewer resources might have a coin-operated mechanical player piano or a hand-cranked gramophone. Customers frequently wanted to hear popular tunes from Broadway shows and the Ziegfeld Follies, opera favorites, ragtime hits, and the latest releases from New York’s Tin Pan Alley. Musicians had to be prepared to play anything the customer wanted to hear. Bawdy lyrics sometimes replaced the actual words to the songs and were often sung by the piano player, the madam herself, or the sex workers in her employ.
Antonia P. Gonzales was the only madam to advertise herself as a musician, and is the only musician mentioned by name in Blue Book. She was known to have been accompanied by the leading piano players of the day, including Tony Jackson and Jelly Roll Morton, while she sang and played the cornet.
At the top of the District’s musical hierarchy were the piano players who worked at the most expensive brothels. “Professors,” as they were commonly known, played for tips against a guarantee put up by the madams. Playing at the most exclusive brothels meant access to an audience with deep pockets. With no band members to pay out, professors were the highest paid of the District’s musicians, and, within this group, Tony Jackson (1882–1921) was the king.
In an interview with folklorist and ethnographer Alan Lomax, pianist Jelly Roll Morton described Jackson as “the greatest single-hand entertainer in the world.” In Storyville, New Orleans (1974), the musician Manuel “Fess” Manetta is quoted as saying, “Tony was in charge from the day he went to work. We all listened to him. Nobody could match him.” Known for his all-encompassing repertoire and beautiful singing voice, Jackson was the top entertainer in Storyville. Entirely self-taught, he began working in the District during his teenage years and was known to have played at most of the high-end brothels, including Lulu White’s Mahogany Hall, Hilma Burt’s, and Antonia P. Gonzales’s, as well as saloons such as Frank Early’s and the Frenchman’s.
Ferdinand Joseph Lamothe (also rendered La Menthe and Lemott) (1890–1941), more commonly known as Jelly Roll Morton, was born to a middle-class Creole family on Frenchmen Street. Early on, he exhibited a passion and talent for music. During his childhood, he attended performances at the French Opera House in the French Quarter, which piqued his interest in the piano. As a teenager, he began playing piano at many of the most expensive brothels of Storyville, including Josie Arlington’s, Willie Piazza’s, Lulu White’s, Antonia Gonzales’s, and Hilma Burt’s. Morton also spent considerable time at the Frenchman’s, which served as an after-hours venue for piano cutting contests (competitions between musicians), some of which lasted well into the afternoon of the following day. Morton’s years playing in the District were highly creative for the artist. He developed his musical voice and began composing a number of the pieces that he would later publish and record, including “New Orleans Blues,” “Jelly Roll Blues,” and “King Porter Stomp.” In 1915 “Jelly Roll Blues” became the first jazz composition to be published as sheet music. Morton would later claim that he invented jazz during his Storyville years, and while many have disputed this claim, he was undeniably an early jazz pioneer.
Like Jelly Roll Morton, Manuel “Fess” Manetta (1889–1969) was influenced as a child by performances at the French Opera House. This early exposure to the European classical music tradition prepared Manetta for his musical career as a piano professor in Storyville brothels such as Lulu White’s and Willie Piazza’s, where opera and classical music were in high demand. Manetta’s collection of sheet music from the Storyville era (a small portion of which is on display here) attests to the popularity of traditional tunes. Piano players needed to be proficient at reading written music, and, according to Manetta, professors were often tested with reading an opera overture for piano prior to landing any steady gig in a brothel. A self-proclaimed “master of all instruments,” Manetta never had much trouble finding work in the District, where he filled in with a number of bands on trumpet, clarinet, guitar, and saxophone.
ORal Histories
Jelly Roll Morton
Rosalind Johnson
Manuel “Fess” Manetta
