[Dixielandjazz] Basin Street

[loerchen2 at aol.com]

Ah, but Rebecca is correct:? Basin Street was adjacent to the Old Basin Canal, where there were indeed boat docks and brothels in close proximity, even pre-Storyville.? The big steamboats docked?down at?the levee, but there was plenty of boat traffic on the canal.? The "Basin" was the turnaround basin where canal boats could offload and head back up the canal to Lake Pontchartrain.? 

Sue (who has to drive down Basin Street every day)




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.


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