Census records, city directories, vital records, and the blue books themselves help to illustrate the life stories of some of the women who worked in Storyville—particularly those who found success as madams.

Born Mary Anna Deubler in New Orleans, Josie Arlington (1864–1914, first image) escaped extreme poverty to become one of Storyville’s most successful madams. She took the surname Arlington from a fashionable Hot Springs, Arkansas, resort hotel she admired, and she applied the name to her brothel at 225 N. Basin Street. The Arlington is advertised in the 1905 Blue Book as “the most decorative and costly fitted out sporting palace ever placed before the American public.” In October 1906 Josie Arlington left her brothel in the care of her longtime associate, Anna Casey, and moved into a substantial private residence at 2721 Esplanade Avenue. The house was moved to its current location, 2863 Grand Route St. John, around 1922 when the school board purchased the Esplanade land for the construction of McDonogh No. 28 School.

One of Storyville’s most notorious madams, Lulu White (1868–1931, second and third images) presided over one of its most famous brothels, Mahogany Hall at 235 N. Basin, which offered only light-complexioned women of color. White’s nephew Spencer Williams immortalized her mansion in his jazz composition “Mahogany Hall Stomp.” Known as the Diamond Queen (for the diamonds she reportedly wore in excess), White was unmatched in self-promotion. She issued her own souvenir booklets, and her photograph appears in both her own guide, New Mahogany Hall, and The Red Book, though the accuracy of the depictions has been disputed. In New Mahogany Hall her likeness bears a strong resemblance to two other women in the book, and the photograph in The Red Book is of a different woman altogether. The glass transom over the entrance to Mahogany Hall, in which “Lulu White” is emblazoned in amber glass jewels, was one of the mansion’s distinguishing features.