The Exhibits
Explore the Storyville Museum’s exhibits and be taken on a fascinating and immersive journey through the storied past of New Orleans, beginning with its establishment as a small French settlement along the Mississippi River and culminating with the establishment of the City’s notorious Red-Light District, known as Storyville. Download a detailed map of the exhibits and follow along to learn about some of the displays, multimedia and artifacts expertly curated to re-tell this fascinating story.
FOUNDERS OF NEW ORLEANS AND THE CASKET GIRLS
"To understand Storyville,
we must first understand the history of New Orleans."
The museum begins the story with a giant full-wall map of North America which is divided by the mighty Mississippi River. In 1682 the French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de LaSalle, floats down the river and claims all of the lands drained by it for King Louis the XIV of France. In 1718 the French city of La Nouvelle Orléans is founded by Jean-Baptiste de Bienville about 90 miles upriver from the Gulf.
Bienville requests that France “send me wives for my men, they are running into the woods after the Indian girls.” But the first boat arrives carrying “corrections girls” -- women of dubious morality swept from the prisons of Paris. The men enjoy their company, but hardly anyone wants to marry them. This initial shipment is followed by the now famous “casket girls”, so named because they each arrive carrying a small casket or box containing their valuable possessions, one of which is on display in the museum. Unlike the “correction girls”, the “casket girls” are certified to be virgins, and are taken in by the Ursuline nuns to become suitable wives for the early settlers.
WAR, PIRATES & THE SCARLET MIGRATION
With the British charging New Orleans in the War of 1812, General Andrew Jackson’s rag-tag militia and his unlikely ally, the pirate Jean Lafitte and his outlaw sailors, are the city’s only defense. Artifacts such as swords, a rifle, and a bayonet from the war are on display along with a dramatic battle scene depicted on a giant wall mural. General Jackson wields his sword in an attack on the British soldiers along the banks of the Mississippi in Chalmette, just a few miles downriver from the French Quarter.
War camps at the time included enterprising women who provide services such as cooking, cleaning, nursing, and companionship to the soldiers… for a price. These women follow Jackson’s troops and descend on New Orleans in what becomes known as the “Great Scarlet Migration”. The museum showcases a life-size camp scene set in the bayou, complete with a male and female silhouette inside the tent, in flagrante delicto.
HOUSE FOR WEARY BOATMEN
The early 1800s ushered in New Orleans’ golden age of growth and vice, led by an invasion of rough-and-ready men known as “Kaintucks” from the Upper Mississippi Valley. The Kaintucks work on large wooden barges or flatboats which transport goods down the Mississippi River to the Crescent City. These men, often described as “dirty, noisy and violent rogues and scallywags”, enjoy their time here, before embarking on the 30 days walk back upriver, by visiting the city’s early red-light districts in search of women, whisky and gambling.
A full-scale reconstructed saloon shows what it would have been like for these unruly riverboat men to spend an evening in the "Swamp" red-light district in a place called the "House for Weary Boatmen", where a scene unfolds inside a saloon of men drinking and playing poker, while a courtesan works the room and a bartender keeps the whisky flowing.
THE EARLY RED-LIGHT DISTRICTS
In the early 1800s there are so many brothels in New Orleans that when the fog rolls in, it is said that entire sections of the city glow like fire in the night from all of the red lanterns hanging in the brothel windows. The "Swamp" District, the Gallatin Street District, and Basin Street District become the primary neighborhoods where vice and violence reigned in 1800s New Orleans.
The city’s brothels of the 1800s are immortalized by the song "House of the Rising Sun" which tells the tale of a man whose life has gone astray in a house of ill repute in New Orleans. The museum has an exhibit dedicated to the three most likely locations where the Rising Sun brothel would have been located in the French Quarter, along with evidence that supports each location’s claim to fame.
THE ESTABLISHIMENT OF STORYVILLE
As the plague of prostitution continues to spread throughout New Orleans, the Loretta Law is passed in 1857 as a way to target “Lewd and Abandoned Women”, who openly ply their trade throughout the city. Only marginally successful, more drastic measures must be taken.
In 1897, councilman Sidney Story sponsors a law which makes prostitution illegal throughout New Orleans, except within a large main district just outside the French Quarter and a smaller one a few blocks away on the uptown side of Canal Street. The main district becomes known as Storyville.
EARLY MARDI GRAS
Mardi Gras is a favorite time for the demimonde of New Orleans. The ladies even have their own French Ball known as the “Ball of Two Well Known Gentlemen” which is thrown on Mardi Gras night. But this was no ordinary Carnival Ball. While it does have an elaborate invitation, a royal court, and a series of costume tableaus, the Queen, and her court, are well-known prostitutes, not virgins from prominent New Orleans families.
The museum showcases the earliest known video of a carnival parade in New Orleans with a short clip taken from an old mutoscope machine (similar to ones on display later in the museum) which shows the Krewe of Rex parading down St. Charles Avenue in 1898, the first full year that Storyville is open. Also on display are elaborate Rex court favors dating back as far as the late 1800s.
THE BLUE BOOK
Storyville reigned from 1897 to 1917 as the largest and most ostentatious red-light district the country has ever seen. A "directory of pleasure" known as the Blue Book is printed and lists madams, their brothels, and hundreds of prostitutes along with full-page advertisements for restaurants, saloons, billiard halls, champagne, liquor, beer, wine, cigars, jewelry, pawn shops, lawyers, druggists, and supposed VD cures.
The museum also features an original 1907 and 1914 Blue Book, and an antique table-top letter press of the type that would have been used to print these Blue Books in the early 1900s. The museum also has fully interactive digital displays of these two Blue Books allowing guests to flip through the pages and read the highlights of what the madams offered at their ornate bordellos.
BASIN STREET BORDELLOS
In this section of the museum guests take a walking tour of Storyville, circa 1900s. Starting at Storyville's train station, guests can take a stroll through the re-created streets of old Storyville as captured in original hand-painted life-size murals of the district’s streetscape. On the right-hand side, the Southern Railway station, also known as the New Orleans Passenger Terminal, is presented in the blueish evening glow of twilight, and on the left is a row of infamous Storyville buildings, starting with Tom Anderson's Arlington Annex Saloon, Josie Arlington’s the Arlington bordello, Lulu White’s Mahogany Hall bordello, and Emma Johnson’s Studio bordello, on which the film Pretty Baby is based.
At the end of the Basin Street stroll, guests come upon "Pepper's Parlor" - a replica of an actual Storyville brothel reception parlor. It is here that you will encounter several hauntingly beautiful ghosts, who materialize out of thin air, in the center of this elegantly appointed room.
LIFE IN THE SEX CRIBS
The "Cribs" of Storyville are one-room apartments containing a bed, washbasin, dresser, chair, and fireplace. The cribs are vastly different from the glitzy brothels of Basin Street. It is here, on Franklin Street, that guests can have an immersive experience of what it would have been like to live and work in a real Storyville crib.
This area of the museum is billed as the darker side of Storyville, where we showcase artifacts from a time when sexually transmitted diseases were uncontrollable, unplanned pregnancies created "trick babies" and opium dens made for wide spread drug use among both workers and customers.
On the other end of Franklin Street, the nightlife is depicted in life-size original mural paintings, of streetscapes showing the Tuxedo Dance Hall, the Big "25" Honky Tonk, the 102 Ranch Dance Hall, and Frank Early's Saloon & Cabaret. It was in these clubs on Franklin Street that early jazz developed and thrived.
PEEP SHOW MACHINES,
GAMBLING & ALCOHOL
In this section guests will find several vintage "peep show" machines from the early 1900s which are popular in penny arcades, amusement parks and saloons. Here guests can view stereoscopic slides and a short movie on antique mutoscope machines from early 1900s peep show arcades. Be sure to sneak a peek!
The museum showcases several bottles of alcohol dating from the Storyville era all which were advertised in the Blue Books. Also on display is an antique absinthe fountain and accessories. Here you can watch a video of a bartender preparing the legendary “Green Fairy” concoction. Absinthe, a popular drink during the early days of Storyville, is banned in 1912 because of its hallucinogenic effects. Nearly 100 years later in 2007 it again becomes legal to serve in the US, but at much lower doses of the hallucinogen thujone. Several bars in the French Quarter serve absinthe in cocktails prepared in the traditional manor with a sugar cube flambeaux and water fountain dripper.
THE MUSIC OF STORYVILLE
AND THE BIRTH OF JAZZ
The music in the Storyville brothels typically revolves around a piano played by a “professor”. Most establishments have a mechanical player piano, which costs a quarter to play and also can be played live. Anchoring this section of the museum is an ornate player piano dating from around the turn of the century, that was said to have once been used in a brothel
Jazz is not born in Storyville, but Storyville provides the perfect environment for it to flourish and plays an important part in its rapid development and spread to the rest of the world. Great musicians like Buddy Bolden, Sydney Bachet, Jelly Roll Morton, Joe “King” Oliver and Kid Ory played in and around Storyville. The museum features a listening station where you can hear Jelly Roll Morton reminisce about his experiences playing piano in Storyville brothels as a teenager. There are also a number of listening station where you can hear what the famous “Naked Dance” strip tease tune sounded like on piano, as well as listen to the very first jazz song ever recorded.
THE E.J. BELLOCQ GALLERY
Around 1912 Ernest J. Bellocq, a commercial photographer by trade, photographs women who live and work in Storyville. Today, Bellocq’s Storyville photos are internationally recognized for their haunting beauty and artistry, offering a rare and intimate look into the lives of some of the women who worked there.
The museum has a number of rare original Bellocqs on display. Sit and relax on a gallery bench while studying these historical images. Imagine what life was like at that time. Immerse yourself in this peek behind-the-scenes look into the lives of some of the women who lived and worked in Storyville over 100 years ago.
STORYVILLE SHUT DOWN / STORYVILLE IN THE CINEMA
World War I brings Storyville to its knees - no pun intended. The tenderloin district is shut down in 1917 as the United States enters the fight against Germany and locates an army and navy base in the Crescent City. A war on prostitutes is also declared in an effort to limit service men’s exposure to sex workers and venereal disease, since there was no cure at that time.
The museum dedicates its final exhibit to the movies and television shows that have portrayed Storyville including New Orleans (1947), Pretty Baby (1977), Storyville (1992), The Naked Dance (1998), and the Interview with the Vampire Series – Season 1 (2022).