Lulu White

Miss Lulu White
And The Girls of Mahogany Hall

Lulu White, and the beautiful, light, bright, damn near white prostitutes who resided at No. 235 Basin St. - the opulent pleasure palace known as Mahogany Hall, located in the red-light district of Storyville in New Orleans. These are the people and this is the place that Spencer Williams was feeling when he wrote Mahogany Hall Stomp - the early instrumental jazz classic of the same name. Williams and White were said to be tight, but as we shall see, he must have been one of the few men of his complexion to even get past the front door.

The fact that her parents were enslaved and that she was born on a farm in Selma, Alabama must have escaped Lulu White's memory when she declared that she should be exempt from the extreme racism that other women who looked like her endured on a daily basis. Interviewed by a local newspaper in 1894, Miss Lulu wanted everyone to know that she was born and raised in the West Indies, and that there wasn't a drop of American Negro in her.

Loud, rude and obnoxious, Lulu arrived in New Orleans in the 1880's, accompanied by a very dark-skinned man who was said to be her stepfather. She immediately embarked on a career of vice and became the darling of the local police precinct having been arrested countless times on charges of prostitution, disorderly conduct, and numerous other infractions that included white slavery. She was said to be short, plump and unattractive (though I beg to differ on that assessment). Attired in elaborately beaded gowns, and diamonds on every finger, up both arms, on her neck and every other place imaginable, White was an unforgettable presence.

It is said that Mae West, the Hollywood star, based her iconic turn in the film, The Belle of the Nineties, soley on Lulu White. West's alias, "Diamond Lil" (clearly a prostitute) became known on film as Lady Lu, and was obviously inspired by Miss White. Whatever anyone thought of her, she was certainly fascinating enough to attract the attentions of various well-to-do men about town, including an oil man, a railroad baron and a department store magnate. Their collective bank accounts helped finance the building of Mahogany Hall at forty thousand Dollars - which equals to about a cool $1 million dollars in today's economy.

The district known as Storyville was established in 1897 and flourished until 1917. It was set up by local authorities to monitor prostitution and limit it to one area of town. It was already established by law that white and black prostitutes could not live or work in the same house and black men were not welcomed as patrons no matter what. However, many old-timers recalled that that there were houses of ill repute that were run by black madams who staffed only black girls available to black men exclusively. There is also a pre-Storyville record of a homosexual brothel that "was known for large scale, noisy, interracial social functions that frequently attracted the wrath of neighbors and police."

In "the District" as it was known, the popular and ambitious Lulu White moved from a well-appointed mini-mansion to the four-story, ornately furnished Mahogany Hall. Originally called the Hall of Mirrors, it was built of solid marble with a stained glass fan window over the entrance door (seen above). The whole house was steam heated and boasted five parlors, an elevator made for two, and fifteen bedrooms with hot and cold running water. There, General Jack Johnson, the 40 inch tall, black midget doorman-turned-pimp stood guard to keep out the undesirables.

Lulu White, the Octoroon Queen, "made a feature of boarding none but the fairest of girls - those gifted with nature's best charms, and would, under no circumstances, have any but that class in her house." In its heyday, Mahogany Hall housed as many as 35 to 40 "octoroon" prostitutes - technically girls of mixed-race backgrounds but specifically with only one quarter African ancestry. As their queen, she made the whorehouse a showplace.

"They had the most beautiful parlors, with cut glass and draperies, and rugs, and expensive furniture ... and the girls would come down dressed in the finest of evening gowns, just like they were going to the opera. They were just beautiful. Their hair-do's were just so, and I'm telling you that Ziegfeld didn't have any more beautiful women as those. Some of them looked Spanish, and some were Creoles, some brownskins, some chocolate brown. But they had to have that figure" remembered the legendary jazzman, Clarence Williams. Early jazz and ragtime musicians were often the only black men allowed on the premises as piano players at the best bordellos.

Not everyone remembered Mahogany Hall with such fondness. One very snobby "John" who first visited the Hall as a skinny teenager with his wealthy father, remembered "the instant we stepped inside that door, it became apparent that, though ornate, the taste reflected in the furnishings and decor was just miserable. Imitation Renaissance tapestries and wall hangings of particularly muddy color hung everywhere. The oriental rugs, possibly actually from the Orient, were thick but shoddy imitations of the luxurious pile and color for which the East is famous." He also recalled Lulu White as being a "monstrosity" but agreed that "the girls, though, were something else again."

Storyville was an area of rats, roaches, open sewers filled with the contents of chamberpots and overflowing garbage cans. Dirt and diseases like syphilis and gonorrhea were intimate friends. Fake cures were rampant.

1915 found the times a'changing for Lulu White and Storyville with subtle and dramatic changes alike. Prices were down in the whorehouses and cribs and local, younger men were supposedly changing their minds about the morality of the business. The Suffrage movement, and other equal rights movements for women were entering into the picture. The girls were moving to other cities that seemed more interested. The mansions fell into disrepair and Lulu White now only had three girls left. Syphilis had taken over and people were sick and showed it. By 1917, the federal government stepped back into the picture and ended the "experiment" known as Storyville, and with no "controlled environment", a new wave of street prostitution (and accompanying crime) spread across the city and into the French Quarter.

Lulu White returned to what she knew best --- petty crime. It really isn't known exactly what happened to her after 1920, but some say that she returned to Selma, Alabama and died there sometime in the 1940's. Mahogany Hall was boarded and used as a city storage space for local department stores. The area formerly known as Storyville was gradually torn down and blighted as the city tried in vain to forget its sordid past.

Mahogany Hall was the last of the fabulous structures to be demolished in 1949. Jazz fans and historians picked the place dry for souvenirs. They stripped the wallpaper and bought pieces of the famous swirling mahogany staircase as it was being disassembled. A few items have turned up in museums and in personal collections. Today, as in yesterday, Mahogany Hall is known as the most lavish whorehouse in Storyville.

Source: Photograph (circa 1904) and article comes from the blog, "Corey@I'll Keep You Posted" by Corey Jarrell