Louis Cathedral clock tower on Jackson Square every Friday, the court house shuts down, law offices close, the chefs at Galatoire's and the bartenders at the Old Absinthe House on Bourbon Street get busy. The ladies of the night are just waking up, starting to make appointments. Prostitution permeated the French Quarter of New Orleans nearly from its founding. In when Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, sieur de Bienville settled on the future site on New Orleans, it was little more than a swamp, filled with snakes, alligators, and insects.
The location attracted only the most hearty or the most savage of men. With few women daring to make the long journey, Bienville wrote to Paris, "Send me women for my Canadians. They are running into the woods after Indian girls. In , eighty-eight women from a house of correction in Paris arrived in New Orleans. A few married, some disappeared to history, but the majority showed themselves to be "girls who could not be restrained. Contact Us By Email.
Most of the girls simply fell back onto the skills and activities that had caused their incarceration in Paris. And thus, prostitution was born in New Orleans. Later, when a worried priest suggested that sending away all of the immoral women would improve the culture of the province, Lamothe Cadillac, then governor of Louisiana, replied, "If I send away all loose females, there will be no women left here at all, and this world would not suit the views of the King or the inclinations of the people.
Many of the women would work the areas near the river where the ships docked. But, many began to work from cheap "cribs" while several of the more entrepreneurial minded began to organize more lavish brothels. One Robert Tallant noted, "Women stood naked in doorways, behind drawn blinds, or sat in windows, calling out to passing men. A few would even seize a man as he went by and try to argue him into doing business. The city's first anti-prostitution ordinance was passed in Additional regulations were passed following the Civil War which eventually lead to an effort to create a confined area for prostitution.
In , Alderman Sidney Story wrote legislation that would create a sixteen block area just outside the French Quarter where prostitution, while not legalized, would be regulated and tolerated. This area became known ironically as Storyville. At its height, about prostitutes were working Storyville daily with an assortment of bars and saloons opening in support of the brothels. When the US Navy, citing health and moral concerns, demanded that it be closed down in , the New Orleans city government strongly protested.
