Lulu White Lulu Hendley, ca. White's exact date of birth is unknown. She was born on a farm near Selma, Alabama , but claimed to be an immigrant from the West Indies. She was of mixed race and enjoyed, for a time, an affluence rare for Creoles of color. In , she ran into financial difficulties leaving her destitute, [ 5 ] and moved to California.
She commuted back and forth between California and Louisiana several times over the course of her career and kept a high profile until the demise of Storyville. The success of Mahogany Hall made her one of the only black self-made millionaires at the beginning of the century. Jazz historian Al Rose sought documentation of her death, and believed that she died at the residence of former madam Willie Piazza in Otherwise, little information about her post-Storyville life is known.
According to publicity of the time, Mahogany Hall housed 40 women. Famous Storyville photographer E. Bellocq 's surviving photographs of the house attest to its abundance of elegant furnishings, huge chandeliers and potted ferns. The building housed several expensive oil paintings, Tiffany stained glass windows and other works of art. One of the things that set Mahogany Hall apart at the time was its refusal to play by the racial segregation laws of the time, and it was the only interracial brothel in New Orleans.
It deliberately hired both white and black prostitutes. Other pamphlets featured photographs and biographies of each of the 'Octoroon' girls. They also contained a supposed picture of Miss White, but it was actually another picture of Victoria Hall, one of the Octoroons. Mahogany Hall served as a House for the Unemployed in the mids but was demolished in The building was one of the last serving brothel structures in the area to be demolished. The Saloon opened in and, with the onset of Prohibition , changed to a soft drink bar.
Throughout the twenties, White was brought in on charges of violating the Volstead Act. White's Saloon building on Bienville Street was one of the handful of Storyville buildings to survive past the s, but was extensively damaged during Hurricane Betsy in , losing its second story; the ground floor remains in modified condition as a one-story building. Lulu White and her business neighbors in Storyville were subject to one of New Orleans' first legal test cases in making a vice district ordinance, for mandatory residential segregation based on gender rather than race.
