New Orleans has a new museum highlighting a shadier part of the city’s history, the Storyville district that was both an open ‘red light’ district and birthplace of New Orleans jazz.
Museum highlights include immersive sets, engaging videos and hyper-realistic holograms created by local artists and theater professionals. A dedicated section on the early history of early jazz and a gallery featuring E.J. Bellocq’s poignant photographs of the prostitutes that worked in Storyville illustrate the complex narratives that shaped this extraordinary era.
Storyville was a raucous center of music, entertainment, gambling, and prostitution from 1897 until 1917. Named for the New Orleans City Councilman Sidney Story who advocated for confining vice it to a single district for easier containment and control, Storyville was shut down by the US Navy at the beginning of World War I.
Because of its content, including classic E. J. Bellocq’s photographs of the area’s prostitutes, the museum has an adults-only policy. It also has a rather steep $31.50 admission charge.
The museum’s founder and curator is Claus Sadlier, a New Orleans native who invented the world’s first fully-insulated paper coffee cup, which he ultimately sold to Dixie Cup. He returned to New Orleans in 2013 and ultimately developed the idea of the museum
