[Dixielandjazz] PC Basin Street

[James O'Briant]

Rebecca Thompson wrote:

> I get a real chuckle out of listening to the lyrics to Basin 
> Street after learning the history of the street.  It was near 
> the boat docks where the brothels were located.

If by "near the boat docks" you mean adjacent to the levee -- the slanted
bank where steamboats landed with their noses up against the shore -- that's
not correct.  Some of the present land and seawall between Decatur Street
and the river is more recent fill and construction, but it's still more than
6 blocks from Decatur Street to Basin Street.  And the steamboat levee
itself stretched much farther up and down the river than the 21-block width
of the French Quarter.

The red-light district, Storyville, was just inland from Rampart Street, the
now-accepted inland boundary of the French Quarter.  The next street inland
from Rampart, running parallel to it, is Basin Street.  Basin Street is only
a few blocks long, from Canal Street to Louis Armstrong Park (which today
includes what was once Congo Square). 

In other words, Basin St. was part of Storyville -- the part where the most
beautiful (and expensive) houses were located -- but it wasn't adjacent to
the Mississippi River.

> Also the "working girls" were either black or white, (but 
> always light) ...

I think not always...

> but the clientele was primarily the upper crust white 
> folk.  

Though the city ordinance that created this legalized prostitution district
specified that the customers could be white only, I doubt that they were
always upper crust.  While the price could be $10 or more (a lot more money
100 years ago than it is today) in the fancier places, there were also
"cribs" (originally a San Francisco term) where the going rate was fifty
cents.

> There was another area in New Orleans designated 
> for the black customers. 

It wasn't designated or legalized the way Storyville was, but it existed.

Jim O'Briant, tuba
Gilroy, CA