Storyville Historic District (Site)

In 1897, New Orleans drew a perimeter around 38 blocks and made prostitution legal within it. Storyville was the only legally sanctioned red-light district in the United States. Jazz was invented in the parlors and dance halls. Jelly Roll Morton played piano in the houses on Basin Street. Louis Armstrong sold coal to the brothels. The district ran for twenty years. The Navy shut it down in 1917 because sailors kept getting into trouble. The city demolished the entire district in the 1930s and built the Iberville housing project on top of it. Almost nothing of the original built environment survives. The site marks where a form of American music came into being, in a place the city later erased. You stand where the addresses were.