Beautiful Crescent: A History of New Orleans (29 page)

Other tenderloin areas existed in the city, such as the “swamp” on Julia and Girod Streets and the two-block long Gallatin Street at the river called the “port of missing men.” These areas abounded with cutthroats, dance-house operators, fight promoters, thieves, thugs,
and pimps. There were dance halls, brothels, saloons, gambling rooms,
cockfighting pits, and rooming houses. Police mortality in these areas was high. “[Gallatin] . . . was the center of narcotics traffic, as well as the home of dealers in stolen goods . . .” (Rose 1978).

In 1898,
Alderman Sidney Story
introduced the ordinance calling for a “restricted” red-light district, hoping to wipe out all other areas of vice and control the restricted area. The document was discreetly worded so as to be legally acceptable, and it passed. The area of brothels that bore his name was both a backhanded honor and a bitter pill for him to swallow.

A license for prostitution, as issued in 1857.

Celebrities from all over the country visited Tom Anderson’s saloon and bawdy houses, such as Josie Arlington’s, which, in time, became “sporting palaces” with furniture, draperies, and chandeliers equal to those in the mansions of St. Charles Avenue. Mardi Gras was a profitable season for brothels, and the inhabitants of the demimonde had their celebrations just as the “society” people did.

Beginning in 1882, before there was a Storyville
, the Ball of the Two Well-Known Gentlemen became the focal point of Mardi Gras
for all the creatures who frequented the area: the bartenders,
prostitutes, musicians, politicians, and policemen. Word spread about
these festivities, and nice young women begged their husbands and fiancées to get tickets to the affair, so that they could see with their own eyes (well-hidden behind masks) how these brazen creatures carried on. In 1906, Josie Arlington
, aware of their curiosity, arranged a police raid in which every lady present would be arrested unless she was carrying a card registering her as a prostitute in good standing. This caused untold embarrassment to a number of high-society ladies, who were carted off to the police station for not being prostitutes.

Tom Anderson, the Mayor of Storyville

Tom Anderson,
the richest and most powerful “business man” in
Storyville
, was an Irishman without equal in flair and raw nerve with regard to the annals of Old New Orleans. Born in 1858 of a poor Irish Channel family, he sold newspapers as a child, became an informer for the police, and added to his earnings by delivering cocaine and opium to two local bagnios. In 1892, he opened a bar and restaurant on Basin Street, which were an immediate success. The well-known brothel owner Josie Arlington
became his consort, and he rebuilt her house and reopened it for business in 1901, renaming it the Arlington Annex.

In time, through friendships made across the bar with policeman and politicians, the blue-eyed, red-haired Anderson boasted two titles, which he juggled admirably. He was both Mayor of Storyville, that tenderloin of crime and corruption, and Honorable Tom Anderson, representative in the Louisiana State legislature of a large and important district of New Orleans. From
Collier Magazine,
February, 1908:

Tom Anderson
overtops the restricted district; he is its lawgiver and its king; one of the names for it is ‘Anderson County’ . . . saloons with their wide-open poker and crap games; the dives where Negroes buy for fifty cents five cents worth of cocaine . . . when a woman of Anderson County commits robbery [not an uncommon occurrence in the brothels], and when the victim complains loudly enough that she has to be arrested, Tom Anderson
comes down and gets her out. He doesn’t even have to give cash bail . . . [she] may be released on parole of any responsible prominent citizen.

The Settlement of Mid-City: 1890-1930

At the turn of the century, space was running out on the two-mile area of natural levee of New Orleans. Three options were available if the city were to accommodate more people: expand toward the lake, expand farther and farther along the levee, or crowd more people onto the same land.

Chartres Street in the French Quarter, including the St. Louis Cathedral on the site of the first church built in the Mississippi valley.

Lakeward expansion was out of the question, in spite of the New Basin Canal and the amusement parks at West End and Spanish Fort. The backswamp, which lay midway between the lake and the river, was uninhabitable because of flooding.

Expansion along the river had its limits, too. On the uptown end at the boundary line between Orleans and Jefferson Parishes, there was a protection levee running from the river to the lake; on the downtown side, expansion was limited by the simple fact that parts of Faubourg Marigny were regularly under water after rains.

What remained, then, was the obvious alternative of packing more people into the same space. New Orleans resisted multi-story residences through fear of inadequate foundation material.

Three centuries of architecture on Bayou St. John.
From top to bottom:
Pitot House, eighteenth century; Holy Rosary Rectory, nineteenth century; and a standard shotgun, twentieth century.

Various architectural examples in New Orleans.
From top to bottom:
Victorian houses on St. Charles Avenue; Tara House on St. Charles Avenue; and Camelback on Canal Street and another Victorian house.