The Storyville District: Prostitution in New Orleans 1897-1917

The Storyville District

When: c.1897-1917

Where: This Red-Light District could be found by connecting these dots....

- The 400 block of South Rampart

- The Eagle Saloon: at the block’s downriver end, by Perdido Street

- The Iroquois Theater: 413-415 South Rampart St.

The Storyville District was a legalized prostitution district associated with the early development of New Orleans-style jazz c.1897-1917. 

    Romanticized by early historians as "The birth-place of jazz", this red light district included brothels, bars and dance halls where jazz artists performed and socialized.

1920's

the 400 block of South Rampart Street is a veritable cradle of jazz, an unmatched grouping of key sites in the music's birth.

Eagle Saloon

At the block’s downriver end, by Perdido Street, the father of jazz, Buddy Bolden, honed his act at the Eagle Saloon.

the Iroquois Theater

413-415 South Rampart St. 

Up the block a bit Louis Armstrong, won a talent show — in whiteface — at the Iroquois Theater. Jelly Roll Morton and Bessie Smith also performed vaudeville houses. In response to institutional Jim Crowism, these new theaters sponsored black entertainment for black audiences.

Each theather had its own 2-piece band - piano and drum set; sometimes an additional horn or 2. It was in this subculture network of little theaters that some of the first commercial reverberations of blues and jazz were felt.

Vaudeville theater settings thrived on interaction between performers and audience. When reviewing a 1917 performance by Mattie Dorsey, a journalist noted, "when she sings those blues, all you can hear them say is 'sig em gal, sing em.'

.

Little Gem Saloon

A couple of doors past that, the young Armstrong was employed and encouraged by a Jewish family, the Karnofskys, who nurtured his love for music, loaned him money for his first cornet and later opened a record store. And at the upriver end, by Poydras Street, is the recently restored Little Gem Saloon, which according to some sources was another Bolden haunt in the first decade of the 1900s.

see: Richard M. Jones "jazz map" in Esquire Magazine,1945