Family Stories: Hitting Bottom & Heights in Shreveport

Family Stories: Hitting Bottom & Heights in Shreveport

There was a house in St. Paul’s Bottom, Shreveport, Louisiana, that was a stone’s throw from Ledbetter Heights. The house was located at 101 Douglas Street. It had no extraordinary features, when it was built in 1895. Michael T. Rosenblath had bought the house for his new bride, Ella Mae Wolfe.

Over the next four years they had three boys: Quinlan, Henry Coty, and Michael Thomas, Jr. Ella Mae Wolfe Rosenblath tragically died in 1900, soon after the birth of their youngest son. The young Michael Thomas, died as an infant in 1901.

A few years later Michael married for a second time. He took as his new bride, Barbara Dolly Lachle, who over the next ten years had seven children of her own: Philip, Carl, Mary, Kathaline, Elsie Mae, Estelle and Martha. Halfway through the family’s many babies the family moved from Douglas Street to Line Avenue in Ledbetter Heights.

An additional property in the St. Paul’s Bottoms was located on 1100 Hunter Street. The lot was vacant and a tenant by the name of Marguarite Sanders wanted to build and open a brothel there. Michael Rosenblath agreed to build and own a house for Ms. Sanders, where she could conduct her business in the area. He rented her the property for many years. Ms. Sanders signed a long-term lease and, in turn, rented the rooms by the hour to her Madams and their male clients.

The Bottoms

In the 1890s the Red River bottoms of Louisiana were low-lying plains with silt-rich soil created by the meandering tributaries upstream from the Rocky Mountains. After many generations of small patch cultivation of “the bottoms,” as people called the area, the residents planted crops like potatoes and corn in the soil. The rich red soil was full of the nutrients and minerals that made for bountiful harvests. The land which formed the bottoms was carved out of territory that from time to time was underwater. The periodic flooding made the ground nourished with more arable land, yet unstable for permanent housing. The ground was not firm enough to support a lot of weight.

As a result, the bottoms became the real estate of last resort for some of the poorest residents of the area. They often could not afford land for a home on higher, more stable ground. The red, sandy color of the Red River made St. Paul’s Bottoms seem so rustic and perpetual, yet the real estate brokers knew differently; the land was perishable.

1900–1915: The Crackdown on Prostitution

During the decade and one half, from 1900 – 1915, there was a crackdown on prostitution in many parts of the country (Louisiana, Texas and Nevada were among the last states to adhere to the change). Known as the “Progressive Era,” many states in the US moved decisively toward strict illegality of prostitution. The drivers of this movement seemed to be zealots who were interested in religious and social reform, public health concerns for sexually transmitted disease, and panic over sex trafficking, which was known as “white slavery.”

The Federal landmark case — the Mann Act — passed in 1910. The Act banned interstate transport of women for “immoral purposes.” The Act gave federal authorities the power to arrest perpetrators who breached the Act. The adoption of the federal law remained slow in many part of the country for the next decade, as states and municipalities tried to find ways to skirt the new law. Over time, however, cities began closing the red-light districts and strengthened the standardization of criminal law. One city to rigorously fight the regulations was New Orleans. The district known as Storyville finally closed in 1917 under pressure from federal legislatures.

By 1920 prostitution was illegal in every state, which meant that brothels and red-light districts were largely shuttered. Federal and state enforcement of these laws, however, was meted out unevenly across the country, some strictly while others much more sympathetically.

Bottoms Home with Rooms to Rent by the hour

Michael Rosenblath was a plumber in the city for many years. As he acquired one property and then another, he became a serial landlord, renting out the vacated properties to tenants. He rented out the St. Paul’s Bottoms houses he bought (including his original 1895 residence on Douglas Steet) to supplement the family income. Dolly Rosenblath collected rent every Sunday from the tenants who could afford the rent ($3.00 per week) they charged. There were no restrictions on subletting the houses to others.

Meanwhile, Marguerite Sanders developed a thriving business at 1100 Hunter Street with male clientele slinking onto the front porch at all hours of the night and during the day. Their entry to the front door was hidden by a large evergreen bush. In short order the Hunter Street house was a location of elevated interest from the men of all races who lived in the area. Ms. Sanders had a thriving enterprise and Hunter Street became a well-known brothel in the Bottoms.

The pinnacle of local interest in the brothel business was in 1917, just at the outbreak of World War I, which exploded into a global conflict. There was also a lot of heat on the sex trade.

World War I

With the outbreak of the first world war, the US found common cause with Western Europe and participated in the war. The entire country became mobilized in the war effort, which included army training, as well as airplane and Jeep building. The local training camps had some prohibitions of their own for the safety and well being of the soldiers. One prohibition was on the sex trade: condemned were all brothels and houses of ill-repute in most states. Louisiana was one of them, Texas was not.

The federal government also issued a prohibition on brothels located within a few miles of any US Army bases. The barracks in Bossier Crossroads and Barksdale Airforce Base, Shreveport, Louisiana, put a virtual standstill on the business prospects for Ms. Sanders. So in 1917 Marguerite Sanders decided to move her establishment a few miles west of its Shreveport location, which repositioned it across the state line in Texas. The short distance west was all she needed. It helped her keep her business open and evade the federal and state prohibitions in Louisiana. At the same time Sanders stopped paying rent to Michael Rosenblath, which she had been paying on the Hunter Street property. Rosenblath felt cheated out of rent on his now vacant property, and he sued Sanders for breach of the lease in the amount of $3,206: which was the back-pay sum he felt she owed him.

In district court the judge agreed with Rosenblath and Ms. Sanders lost her case. However, she was so adamant about her perceived injustice that she took the matter to a higher authority.

The Louisiana Supreme Court

Marguerite Sanders and her lawyers decided to appealed the case to the Louisiana Supreme Court. On appeal the case was overturned in 1919, thereby exonerating Sanders of any further payments. Rosenblath, perhaps justifiably, felt injured by the loss rental fees for five years because of Sander’s broken tenancy.

There seems to have been some unusual justice and moral chicanery at work in the bayous during those days of real estate Heights and Bottom of Shreveport, LA.