history of storyville new orleans
Created by municipal ordinance in 1897, Storyville was New Orleansâs infamous red-light district. It remained open until 1917, when the federal government shut it down as part of a nationwide crackdown on vice districts.
Storyville was shut down at the start of World War I and razed to make way for the Iberville Housing Projects in the early 1940s. A few buildings remain from the storied vice district of New Orleans, but they show nothing of the humanity and the spirit of a Bellocq photograph from that bygone experiment in urban reform. Books: Lee Friedlander and John Szarkowski, E.J. Bellocq Storyville Portraits, Little Brown & Co., 1970.