With integrity unquestioned, a heart ever open to appeals of distress, a charity that was boundless, she is gone; but her memory will be kept green by many who knew her sterling worth. – obituary, Washington Evening Star
Prohibitionists who vomit out nonsense about whores “selling our bodies” demonstrate by their use of the phrase that their comprehension of male sexuality is an absolute vacuum. Their lurid description of the mythic “john” who “hates and dehumanizes women” and thinks of harlots as disposable collections of holes is as far removed from the typical client as the average neofeminist is from a normal woman; if it were true there would be no regulars and very few happy hookers. Furthermore, a creature such as the “antis” imagine would pay as little as possible for his pleasure, yet in reality bargain-hunters are no more common than men who are willing to pay as much as they can comfortably afford; this is why good brothels have always been lucrative. And while the women in such places may be among the most beautiful available and the accommodations the most luxurious, one of the most important features of the expensive bordello is its discretion; most men who can afford luxury prices cannot afford publicity, so the success of a madam who can both run a fine house and keep her clients’ secrets is a virtual certainty. And Mary Ann Hall, who ran the most successful brothel in 19th-century Washington, D.C., was so exceptionally discreet she actually vanished from history for over a century after her death.
She was born in 1814, but nothing is known of her life before she arrived in the capital in the mid-1830s. She prospered in her profession, though, catering to the Washington elite, and by 1840 had saved enough money to build a large, three-story brick house at 349 Maryland Avenue. The residence was shrewdly placed; though she got the land cheap because of the proximity of a flood-prone canal, it was also only four blocks from Capitol Hill, near the Smithsonian Institute. As her business flourished and traffic to the area increased, her property value soared; by the time the Federal Provost Marshal cataloged the city’s 450 brothels in 1862, Hall’s was the finest and most respected. And due to the patronage of countless politicians, it was protected from the periodic revenue-trolling raids conducted by corrupt police on equally-legal but less-well-connected houses.
The aforementioned catalog estimated there were 5000 prostitutes in the city, the majority working for brothels of various sizes (Mary Ann had the most at 18) and the rest streetwalkers or courtesans in private residences. It cannot be assumed that this number was in any way representative of the harlot population either before or after the Civil War; many of them were probably transients and camp followers there to capitalize on the massive buildup of troops, contractors and other war-related temporary residents, and most of those “brothels” were probably nothing more than incalls shared by at most two or three girls. Many of them were located in the same general area as Mary Hall’s, which was also home to a number of industries and businesses catering to the nearby military encampment. After the war, a severe housing shortage resulted in the entire district being redeveloped with tiny, cheap houses called “alley dwellings”, mostly occupied by former slaves and recent immigrants. Unsurprisingly, the crime rate skyrocketed in the ‘70s, and though Hall’s business continued to be profitable the area’s blackened reputation surely dissuaded some of her clientele. At the same time the “social purity” movement arrived in Washington, and busybody socialites descended on the district to “rescue” their “fallen sisters” from degradation (undoubtedly making their husbands even more reluctant to visit the neighborhood). By 1878 she had had enough and retired, renting the house first to another madam and later to a women’s clinic; she died of a cerebral hemorrhage on January 29th, 1886, at the ripe old age (for the time) of 71.
Within a few years, her name lapsed into obscurity and it is unlikely any historian would ever have put together the few records which specifically named the prominent and highly-eulogized lady buried in an expensive tomb at the Congressional Cemetery as a madam. Ironically, the factor which eventually brought her story back into the light was the same thing which made her last few years of business more difficult: the descent of her neighborhood into a slum. An acrimonious family dispute over her estate forced the sale of the brothel, which in 1892 was purchased by the Institution for the Education of Colored Youth (a school for black children). By the turn of the century the “progressives” were blaming all of Washington’s crime on the “bawdy houses” and “degraded negroes” in the southwestern part of the city; in 1914 prostitution was criminalized and the police (at the instigation of First Lady Ellen Wilson) launched a crusade to “eliminate” the problem by repeated raids and throwing the poorest residents of the district out of their homes. At the beginning of the Great Depression the government bought up nearly all the land in the area, and by 1934 had razed most of the buildings (including Mary Ann Hall’s); eight years later a temporary building for wartime office space went up on the site, and after it, too was razed in the 1960s the area became a park.
Finally, in 1989 Congress decided to build a new Smithsonian wing, the Museum of the American Indian, on the site, and dispatched a team of archeologists to excavate it before the work of construction was to begin. And though the building’s foundation revealed nothing of interest, the contents of its trash heap caught the archeologists’ attention; they included “gilt-edged porcelain, corset fasteners, seeds from exotic berries and coconuts and bones from expensive meats, including turtle,” plus hundreds of corks from an expensive brand of champagne. Archival research then unearthed the history of the place and its mistress, and though we now know her name and a little of her fame, the identities of her clients and the details of their preferences and activities will forever remain her secret.
“(at the instigation of First Lady Ellen Wilson) ”
I didn’t know anything about this (the history of Wilson depresses me, so I don’t read it much) but I can’t say I’m surprised that the ‘Lady’ in question was a buttinsky and a bigot.
And the Progressives (*spit*) still laud Woodrow’s memory.
Hall was rather grand for the antebellum period. There was also the District’s red light zone — called Murder Bay by the local press — from the Civil War to World War I. It was located between 9th and 14th south of Pennsylvania Ave., across from the Willard Hotel and a”Stoney’s throw from the White House.”
Years ago I traced many of the brothels and the workers, a rather easy task as they’re all listed as proprietors and prostitutes in the federal census. Several women owned their establishments for decades.
Their closure was the result of “progressive” legislation. The so called Iowa law required landlords to post a signs listed their names and business addressing the front if commercial buildings so that should any illegal activities occur within the landlord could’ve held responsible.
A second reason for their closure — besides government — was the 1919 race riot which like others of the era (the Robert Charles riot in New Orleans for example) the white rioters confided their rampage in the red light district seemingly aimed at establishments know for interracial mixing.
Finally like Mrs Hall’s property the federals government bought up the area. The archeological dig, done in the 1990s found the same interesting artifacts. The they built the Ronald Reagan International Trade Center over it– where by the way — the Wilson Center is housed and the USAiD offices are located.
Ah, the government; awful no matter how far back you go.
Damn … this is a great story! She’s buried in the Congressional Cemetary? I didn’t even know they had one. Must check it out next time I’m up in D.C. A pic of the gorilla standing next to her gravesite would be awesome!!
“It cannot be assumed that this number was in any way representative of the harlot population either before or after the Civil War; many of them were probably transients and camp followers there to capitalize on the massive buildup of troops, contractors and other war-related temporary residents,” – Don’t you usually talk about the myth of the gypsy whore? How is this different from that/
Wars go on for years, and the people who build up because of them really DO have money to burn. Apples and oranges.
Yes, the American Civil War was one of these unique events that you really can’t compare to anything else, not even the First World War. Also, I’m pretty sure that prostitution had not yet been legally suppressed in the United States yet, but my history on this period is fuzzier than I’d like it to be. (Or rather, neither in the United States or the Confederate States, to be more accurate.)
I know it’s a completely different Civil War, but this also reminds me that the BBC miniseries about the British Civil War, “The Devil’s Whore,” was renamed, “The Devil’s Mistress” in the United States so that unsuspecting Netflix browsers wouldn’t have their very eyes melt from their sockets when browsing the historical fiction section and encountering the Forbidden Word. (The British, it seems, are made of harder stuff.) I watched it, it was fairly interesting, but I preferred “The Way We Live Now.”
Ah, Woodrow Wilson, what a complete, humorless hate-filled lying bastard that man was. (Him I know a bit about, I’m a bit of a World War I buff. “He kept us out of war,” indeed!)
Sigh… I realized that I should probably retire “bastard” from my vocabulary as an epithet. One of my great grandmothers was a bastard child, and it caused her no end of grief when she was alive.
I’ll try to start using “creep” in it’s place. Or maybe “creature”… I like the sound of that. (I’ve started to become more aware of this lately, because it gets my back up lately whenever I see people use the term “whore” in print to refer to politicians or other lowlifes as a shorthand way of saying they are immoral… then I’ve started to think about other words that are misused too….)
The mental and physical health of our leaders has fascinated me for many years. Woodrow Wilson was described by Keynes at the Versailles peace negotiations as being “ill informed” and “his mind was slow and unadaptable”.
Wilson had a major stroke in 1919; his wife and his doctor ran the country until the end of his presidency.
It’s only speculation, but the “slow and unadaptable” mind might be an effect of hardening of the arteries, a predecessor of the stroke. (The same argument seems to apply to FDR.)
I’m planning on a trip to DC in November, so I’ll make it part of my itinerary to visit her grave.
They held her in high esteem to bury her where they did, even if they couldn’t publically acknowlege her.
Well – the ironic thing is that she’s probably the most moral person buried in the “Congressional Cemetary”. LOL!
After seeing that picture you included of Mary Hall’s grave, I have one word of advice for anyone who wants to visit it:
Don’t blink. Don’t even blink. Blink and you’re DEAD. They’re fast—faster than you can believe. Don’t look away, don’t turn your back, and DON’T BLINK!!! Good luck!”
That was a really good episode, and basically a bottle show too!
She sounds cool. Reminds me of the super hero with a secret identity so secret even she didn’t know about it for a while.