Storyville was the only legally sanctioned red-light district in American history — sixteen square blocks of Central City, bounded by Basin, Iberville, North Robertson, and St. Louis Streets, where prostitution was permitted by municipal ordinance from 1897 to 1917. Its founding wasn't a celebration. The city had decided it could not eliminate what had always been there, and chose to contain it instead. The neighborhood filled with brothels, saloons, and the jazz musicians who played in their parlors: Jelly Roll Morton, Tony Jackson, and a teenager named Louis Armstrong who grew up nearby and heard it all from the street.
The Navy shut it down in November 1917, citing the moral hazard to sailors stationed at the nearby base. Most of the buildings came down in the 1930s to make way for the Iberville housing projects, themselves demolished in 2013. What remains is a handful of structures near the old district's edge, E.J. Bellocq's haunting photographs of the women who worked there, and the music that was invented in rooms that no longer exist.
What stood here
4 surviving images.
Portrait of a Storyville sex worker by E.J. Bellocq, 1912
One of the few surviving Storyville buildings — formerly Frank Early's saloon
Advertising flyer for jazz pianist Tony Jackson, c. 1910
Bedroom in what was clearly one of the more upscale brothels in the "Storyville" district. Bed with large hardwood headboard and frame, small side tab, 1900