The Levee, Chicago

History

• The House of All Nations, where, similar to the Parisian establishment of the same name, girls from different countries of the world could be found
• The Little Green House on Bed Bug Row
• The Bucket of Blood, an infamous saloon on the southwest corner of 19th Street and Federal. This bar was mentioned in a newspaper in 1916 for serving still liquor after the curfew. The name most likely comes from the fact that in the morning, after numerous brawls and stabbings, blood had to be cleaned from the floor.
• Ed Weiss's Capitol, a dance hall owned by Ed Weiss whose brother Louis also owned the brothel The Sapphos
• Freiberg's Dance Hall, a brothel between 22nd Street, Wabash Street and State Street. The restaurant offered a bar, dance floor and contact with prostitutes. According to the Chicago Vice Commission, the dance hall was one of the most infamous venues in Chicago, after it was learned that women were often kidnapped and forced into prostitution from there. Kenna and Coughlin resided at Freiberg's Dance Hall. It closed on August 24, 1914.
• Everleigh Club, led by Ada and Minna Everleigh on Dearborn Avenue, was regularly frequented by the society's elite. The prostitutes, who called themselves "butterflies," earned $100 to $400 a week in the brothel, which were phenomenal sums for the time given the prevailing daily wages elsewhere. From this club came the contemporary phrase "I'm going to get Everleighed," which most likely later became the colloquialism "get laid".

Closure of The Levee

Timeline

• Mid-19th Century - Chicago has more arcades than New Orleans and Pittsburgh combined. The metropolis, whose brothels and arcades are larger and more revealing than elsewhere, was once considered the "craziest city in the US".
• 1871 - The Great Chicago Fire. Many saloons and brothels are destroyed. The Levee District's predecessor, the Customs House District, is being built between Harrison Street, Polk Street and Dearborn Station.
• 1893 - The brothels and gambling saloons of the Levee attracted a crowd of visitors from the World's Columbian Exposition.
• 1895 - Jim Colosimo moves to the Levee District, which already includes 2,000 brothels, saloons and gambling salons.
• 1897 - Prohibition of street prostitution in a designated zone.
• February 1, 1900 - The luxury Everleigh Club opens its doors.
• May 15, 1900 - The Chicago Vice Commission seeks to close brothels for the first time.
• 1903-1909 - Van Beven and Colosimo engage in trafficking of young prostitutes who are scheduled to so-called "cadets" on a five-year rotation between brothels. From there, the girls descend to working at hour hotels and then street prostitution. Colosimo and Van Beven lead a "White Slave Ring", where their victims are often young girls from rural areas, lured to Chicago by the promise of marriage. They were then raped by the cadets. The girls suffered a martyrdom of drug abuse, beatings and rape. Only a few manage to free themselves from it. Many die prematurely from alcohol and drug abuse, as well as venereal diseases. Van Beven's and Colosimo's system gives the cadets a continuous supply of "fresh meat". Colosimo and Van Beven stretch their thriving businesses nationwide to New York, St. Louis and Milwaukee.
• 1905 - Colosimo opens his first saloons and single-hour hotels.
• October 18, 1909 - Rodney "Gipsy" Smith leads a march of 200 Christians through the Levee District.
• January 9, 1910 - Nathaniel Ford Moore, a well-known American golfer and son of the President of the Rock Island Railway Company, dies in the brothel of Vic Shaw of a narcotic overdose. In an attempt to cover this up, Shaw accuses her rivals, the owners of the Everleigh Club. The death causes a social scandal.
• 1910 - Colosimo opens the cabaret "Colosimos Café" in the heart of the Levee at 2126 South Wabash. The well-kept restaurant with a sophisticated ambience plays both jazz and Italian opera arias. It quickly becomes the center of Chicago's nightlife, attracting politicians, artists and actors.
• 1910 - The estimated gross proceeds from prostitution are $60 million and the net gain is $15 million. In the same year, brothel owners found the protective association, "Friendly Girlfriends".
• 1910 - Passing of the Mann Act against the "White Slavery". The wording prohibits the "transport of a woman across national borders for immoral purposes"
• October 25, 1911 - The Everleigh Club closes.
• December 10, 1911 - Inspector P.D. O'Brien implements measures against alcohol consumption and music performance, also banning unaccompanied women remaining in bars.
• October 3, 1911 - Charges are brought against a total of 135 people associated with the Levee. These include "Big Jim" Colosimo, Ed Weiss, Roy Jones and Vic Shaw.
• 1912 - Due to public pressure, prostitution in the Levee is targeted. The City of Chicago's "Moral Division" embarks on a mass arrest of prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers, contract killers, bar owners and gamblers.
• October 22, 1913 - The Mayor of Chicago obtains the closure of Ed Weiss's Capitol.
• July 18, 1914 - The closure of brothels in the Levee causes violence, during which a police officer dies.
• August 24, 1914 - Closure of Freiberg's Dance Hall as one of the Levee's last long-standing clubs.
• 1920s - Under the influence of Kenna and Coughlin, gambling in the Levee continues to grow. The Chicago Outfit increasingly shifts prostitution to other districts like Cicero or the suburbs.

  Notable persons associated with the Levee District

• Michael "Hinky Dink" Kenna was the alderman of the First Ward who owned a saloon on Clark street called the Workingman's Exchange. Here he would bribe people to vote for him by offering a free lunch and mug of beer for a nickel.
• "Bathhouse" John Coughlin ran the First Ward with Hinky Dink and owned a tavern on West Madison named, "Silver Dollar Saloon." Many people called him "Bathhouse" John.
• Ada Everleigh was the owner and madam of the Everleigh Club with her younger sister Minna. Ada played the role as the executive who balanced the books. She also made it her priority to keep the club clean and spent half of her time wiping the mirrors, straightening oil paintings, and checking the Gold Piano for marks. The Everleigh Club was the best brothel in the Levee and girls considered it to be a superior position to get picked into staying there.
• Minna Everleigh was the owner and madam of the Everleigh Club with her sister Ada Everleigh. She was the mingler, the one who did all the talking for the club. She was almost framed for the murder of two different men, Marshall Field Jr. first and Nathaniel Ford Moore five years later by Vic Shaw, who also convinced Pony Moore to go in on it the first time by bribing him $40,000.
• Ike Bloom. His real name was Isaac Gitelson and he made arrangements for protection payments with the police for the Levee District. He also operated a dance hall, the Freidberg, which he said was a dance academy to keep reformers from finding out the truth. This dance hall had a bar in the front with a long dance room in the back and an orchestra on the balcony. His rules for the girls in his hall were: she must report in by nine p.m. every night, persuade men to spend at least 40 cents every time they bought a round, and to lure guys to the Marlborough Hotel.
• Jim Colosimo, aka "Big Jim," ran a white slavery ring where he had girls depend on him for praise and protection. Girls would be lured to Chicago by being promised good jobs and nice homes, only to be sold to other brothel owners. He loved diamonds and was always playing with them in his hands; he would buy them from thieves or win them by gambling. In 1920 he was shot in his café and died.
• Victoria Colosimo was married to Jim Colosimo and helped him run pool halls and saloons. She operated two of the dives, the Victoria and the Saratoga.

• Maurice Van Bever, Big Jim's partner; operated two saloons called the Paris and the White City. The trafficking, which he operated together with his wife Julia, confirmed by statements of the minor Loretta Campbell, who was abducted from St. Louis and was picked up in a raid in the "White City". Van Bever drove hundreds of prostitutes into the homes of Colosimos and was arrested in 1909.
• Ed Weiss, brothel owner next to the Everleigh Club who would pay off the Levee cabdrivers to drive drunken men to his door instead of the Everleigh Club.
• Vic Shaw, born Emma Elizabeth Fitzgerald. A madam to a house on South Dearborn Street who hated and felt threatened by the Everleigh sisters. Her girls were not treated very well. They were harshly disciplined and not always given proper examinations by doctors.
• Pony Moore was the owner of two levee dives called the Turf Exchange Saloon and the Hotel De Moore resort.
• John "Mushmouth" Johnson was the first African American vice lord who opened a saloon and gambling house on State Street.
• Reverend Ernest Albert Bell, a preacher who would walk around the Levee streets every night besides Monday to protest the Custom House Place and tried to get the mayor to close it.
• George Little owned a saloon called Here It Is and ran a combination bar and brothel called the Imperial on Armour Avenue, right next to one of Van Bever's dives. He was also considered to the Levee Czar meaning he was sent personally by Hinky Dink and Big Jim to collect protection payments.
• Roy Jones, Vic Shaw's husband who operated a casino on State Street.
• Belle Schrieber, a working girl in the Everleigh Club, who was kicked out for sneaking around with a boxer named Jack Johnson.
• Lillian St. Clair, also kicked out of the Everleigh Club for the Jack Johnson incident.
• Bessie Wallace, also kicked out of the Everleigh Club for the Jack Johnson incident.
• Virginia Bond, also kicked out of the Everleigh Club for the Jack Johnson incident.
• Monsieur Emond, a French dressmaker at the Everleigh Club, who had told a man investigating Marshall Field Jr's death the name of two girls in the Club, going by the names of Camille and Hughs, who had played a role in his murder.
• Panzy Williams, Madam of a brothel, who was convicted for refusing to surrender one of her girls to her parents, who had asked for their daughter back in 1907.
• Mary Hastings : infamous brothel owner and human trafficker who came to Chicago in 1888 after already gaining experience in her hometown of Brussels, Paris, Toronto, Denver, Portland and San Francisco. She was one of the first women to systematically operate "White Slavery" in around 1890. Using bribes, or services of the girls to officials, she escaped police investigation for many years. Her houses were considered the worst brothels in the city, in which any kind of perverted wishes were fulfilled. She was credited with saying, "If a girl was good enough to be accepted at ordinary brothel, then she was too good for her own". From about 1893, she attracted young girls from rural areas of the Midwest of 13 to 17 years of age on the pretext of earning good money in Chicago. In one of her notorious houses, they took their clothes off and were abused by six "professional" rapists. This was the process called in the jargon of the trade, "The Life," which included a continuing ordeal of abuse, rape, and inhumane treatment. Following the "breaking-in", the victims were either smuggled into homes or resold to other brothel operators for approximately $50 to $300, depending on their age and appeal. The inhumane working hours usually went from noon to five in the morning. During this time the girls often consumed schnapps and absinthe to get through. British journalist William Stead once visited one of Hastings brothels and described the conditions in his socially critical article "If Christ came to Chicago." Legend has it that some of the girls managed to smuggle out a note reading "I am being held as a slave" to alert the police to this crime. In 1895, after nine girls escaped from the brothel under daring conditions, the criminal machinations of Mary Hastings were blown open. The police were forced to act and Hastings fled to Toronto, Canada, never returning to Chicago. In Canada, she operated under the name Madame Gain.

  Prostitution in Chicago After the Levee District