So, what once was a deterrent to business is now one of the city’s biggest attractions. Essentially, the French Quarter as it exists today is a tamer version of Storyville. Then there is the fact that not thirty years after the city officials won its ar against vice, it started encouraging it again through the revamping of the French Quarter. Again, while the rest of the country was enjoying the music that Storyville created, New Orleans was not. With the end of Storyville came the complete and total migration of its more famous jazz musicians away from New Orleans. While the rest of the country entered the Roaring Twenties and its looser standards, New Orleans went in the opposite direction. First, the timing of Storyville’s end is odd. There are several ironies about the end of Storyville. It takes thirty years and lots of money, but eventually, the reformers shut down Storyville, forcibly evicting everyone who lives within the district. At the same time, the Victorian attitude of believing certain sins like sex and drink were best kept outside the house changes. Eventually, city businessmen see Storyville as a bane to the city and a deterrent to potential capital investors. I learned from Empire of Sin that the more things change, the more things stay the same. In fact, stories about happenings in Storyville made their way to Europe as proof that the debauchery occurring in NOLA knew no bounds. While something similar happened in many of the larger cities in the United States, what makes New Orleans so different is the sheer extent to which it embraced Storyville. We learn, repeatedly, all about the incredible profits to be had by sin, the influx of shadier and more violent businessmen from New York City, and the increasing cry from the conservative temperance and other reformers to shut down Storyville.
#Empire of sin book serial
Krist starts and ends his novel with a string of unsolved murders that may have been Mafia-related and may have been due to a serial killer, he spends most of his time following Storyville from its beginning to its demise. Most important to this period is the idea that the city leaders had of limiting all of the city’s vices – alcohol, prostitution, gambling, interracial relationships, and jazz – to a few specific blocks of the city called Storyville or the Tenderloin district. There were Mafia turf wars and racial equality that soon morphed into a burgeoning Jim Crow sentiment during this time. Krist’s novel covers New Orleans from the post-Reconstruction period to the Roaring Twenties. I didn’t exactly get what I wanted, and what I did get was not presented in as interesting a fashion as I hoped it would be for such an exuberant city. In reading Empire of Sin by Gary Krist, I hoped to learn more about the city’s past to bridge the gap in my knowledge of the city’s history. Its European vibe, the amalgam of cultures, its decadence, and anything goes attitude make it a place to visit for many people. New Orleans, Louisiana, has to be one of the more fascinating cities in the United States.
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