Creating the Big Easy: New Orleans and the Emergence of Modern Tourism, 1918-1945

CHAPTER 3 A New Babylon: Vice and Gender in New Orleans

C H A P T E R 3 i= 8] A NEW BABYLON Vice and Gender in New Orleans In 1925, after months of living in New Orleans, a young William Faulkner put to ink his initial impression of the port city. The sketch likened the city to a “courtesan, not old and yet no longer young, who shuns the sunlight that the illusion of her former glory be preserved.” She surrounded herself with dull mirrors and worn furniture, a decor that conveyed an “atmosphere of a bygone and more gracious age.” Her deteriorating residence reflected the taming of the city’s flamboyant nightlife, which had centered on elaborate Storyville brothels. The closure of the red-light district and the victory of Prohibitionists after the First World War forced commercial sex and alcohol into the shadows. The astute Mississippian noted that the aging woman now received “few in number ” despite her captivating allure. Her fortunes, like her youth, had slipped away. Drunken revelries and colorful madams faded into legend . Many travelers who had patronized the city’s carnal attractions no longer came. To Faulkner, only one title seemed appropriate for his sketch: “The Tourist.”1 As Faulkner suggested, the pleasures of New Orleans had been a profitable attraction. Brothels and bars unleashed men from the subdued behavior practiced at home, where wives and children lived. Reformminded local politicians had sought to regulate carnal pleasures by establishing the nation’s largest red-light district, Storyville, but the graft 104 and profits resulting from the concentration of brothels, bars, and music halls reinforced the popular image of New Orleans as a harbor for wanton immorality. This image ignored the many ways Storyville meshed with the interests of businessmen in the age before mass tourism. Maleoriented attractions formed the backbone of local nightlife, drawing male visitors and, more importantly, providing a place to entertain business clients—at the time, predominantly men. After a hard day’s work, Storyville provided a place to relax, a place that fit neatly with the business community’s desire to spatially segregate work from leisure as well as foster a work-intensive city by controlling vice. The closure of Storyville and the suppression of the city’s malecentered attractions paved the way for the creation of a tourism industry structured for the enjoyment of both genders. Nightlife and gender conventions, both closely linked, would change significantly as women pressed for an expanded role in society during the first two decades of the twentieth century, from the right to vote to participation in organizations committed to the moral cleansing of American life. According to historian Alison Isenberg, women “established the field of municipal housekeeping—a domain in which they attacked and struggled to reform the shabby conditions of America’s business streets.” The “feminizing adornment agenda” introduced garbage receptacles and ornamental streetlights to the urban scene. Overhanging wires were buried. Trash-filled lots and gutters were cleaned. Streets were paved. But women did not stop at physical enhancements of the cityscape. Shutting taps and closing brothels helped erase the stigma placed on women who left the domestic sphere to work in public spaces long considered the cultural domain of women of questionable, even purchasable , virtue. By 1920, the actions of these crusaders had suffocated New Orleans’s largely male-oriented nightlife. As a result, women during the interwar years felt increasingly comfortable venturing into the tamed streets.2 New Orleans politicians and businessmen responded by making the best of the situation. They secreted away a remnant of the city’s formerly flamboyant nightlife, allowing men continued access to the pleasures they craved while making city streets more hospitable to the A New Babylon 105 growing numbers of women entering public spaces. Over time, the repression of drinking and prostitution permitted carnal behavior, previously strictly associated with male entertainment, to lose its gendered identification. Urban reforms thus prepared the way for businessmen and elected officials to craft a tourism industry as well as an urban space suited to both sexes. New Orleans Nights In 1922, Pastor L. T. Hastings of the Coliseum Place Baptist Church joined fellow religious leaders and concerned parents in praising Mayor Andrew McShane after he steadfastly refused to permit a 3 July parade considered too offensive for public streets. Hastings informed McShane that his decision heartened “the confidence of all decent, self-respecting citizens of New Orleans in...