Willie V. Piazza, known as “The Countess,” was a successful Storyville madam who reigned relatively serenely over her mansion at 317 N. Basin Street. Hers was one of several so-called octoroon houses in the district which featured light-skinned women of color for white clients seeking to indulge in sex across the color line. This desire was rooted in the fantasy of the antebellum planter aristocracy, when sexual power over light-complexioned black women was considered a status symbol.

I can’t tell you how many times it’s happened: I’ll be on the Canal Street ferry riding home toward the West Bank, and a tourist will point across the river and ask me, “So what’s on this island?” It’s a head shaker, but I guess from that vantage my neighborhood does look a little like an island, with the Crescent City Connection at one end and water wrapping around the land at the other.

In an 1850 pamphlet summarizing the ongoing litigation of Myra Clark Gaines, journalist Alexander Walker wrote, “The wildest romance ever written, could not contain a greater variety of strange incidents, more affecting details, more strongly marked characters, a more constant succession of stirring events, and stronger exhibitions of folly, intrigue, deception and crime.”  

With the global outbreak of coronavirus, we find ourselves in the middle of a world-altering event. Here in New Orleans, which has one of the highest concentrations of COVID-19 cases in the country, we are adjusting to this new reality of life during a pandemic. 

For all of us at The Historic New Orleans Collection, these historic times compel us to extend our work in new ways: while we will continue to present history, we are also chronicling it in real time.