Mara L. Keire, a member of the history faculty at the University of Oxford, has made a career out of studying debauchery. Her published works have included “Dope Fiends and Degenerates: The Gendering of Addiction in the Early Twentieth Century,” and “The Vice Trust: A Reinterpretation of the White Slavery Scare in the United States, 1907-1917”; now, with her new book “For Business & Pleasure: Red-Light Districts and the Regulation of Vice in the United States, 1890-1933,” Keire explores the culture that developed in the seedier spots within New Orleans, New York, San Francisco, and points between. Recently, Keire answered my questions about vice’s history—and its present-day role—in America.

Why red-light districts?


You write that red-light districts “arose out of the United States’ creole cultural heritage and the new science of city planning.” Can you discuss this new city-planning technique, and explain why American red-light districts had their heyday specifically between 1890 and the First World War?

It’s too easy to fall back on the old cliché of “immigration, industrialization, and urbanization,” but American cities were exploding in the eighteen-nineties. With such rapid expansion in people and businesses, city leaders had to impose some sort of order on the chaos. Red-light districts were an outcome of the larger process of zoning cities into commercial, residential, and industrial sectors. Not surprisingly, municipal reformers and “professional” politicians fought over who controlled urban growth. At first, reformers thought that if they could separate ward politicians from their constituents by removing saloons from residential neighborhoods, then the cities would develop into more moral places. Working-class politicians, in contrast, had a more flexible perspective on urban development, and soon embraced the financial benefits of a central location for disreputable recreation. For almost twenty years, the two factions fought over which direction commercial leisure would take. Like most long drawn-out fights, they eventually reached an impasse. Some reformers managed to close the vice districts in their cities, while in other places, the machine politicians managed to keep the districts open. And then World War I happened. The federal government came down on the side of the reformers—mustn’t do anything to hurt the moral or physical health of the new recruits—and broke the local stalemates, demanding the nationwide closure of all major urban vice districts.

What most surprised you during your research?

That the race riots in Atlanta in 1906 and Springfield, Illinois, in 1908 occurred in red-light districts came as a complete surprise. I knew that race shaped the interactions between customers and clients of vice. I also knew that African-American entertainers often had much higher status than white visitors to vice districts. But I never considered how white resentment toward black madams, saloon keepers, musicians, and prostitutes could erupt into the systematic destruction of mixed-race, but black-run venues. For me, these riots helped me to understand better when and why city officials implemented racial segregation in public spaces.

What do you think of the “Disney-fication” of America’s modern-day vice districts, like Times Square and Bourbon Street? Is the traditional red-light district a thing of the past, now that the Internet gives people access to much of the “sporting” life?


“Disney-fication” is a new name for an old phenomenon. The builders of Coney Island established their amusement parks right near an old red-light district. And while the park managers only encouraged a bit of spooning in the tunnel of love or a little hoochie-coochie in their dance halls, visitors could easily go to the Bowery—as Coney Island’s main strip was known—and rent a room in a hotel, visit a beer garden, or have “smoke” in a cigar shop. Then, as now, commercial recreation was just that: a business. Entertainment entrepreneurs do what they can to draw in as many customers as they can. Sometimes that means Disney-fying. Other times that means selling something a little more salacious.

The traditional red-light district died when cars and telephones meant that prostitutes didn’t have to rely on foot traffic anymore. The internet is just another example of the sex trade’s eager incorporation of new technology. From telegraph to telephone, electricity to fax machine, VHS to internet, vice entrepreneurs have embraced the most modern means available for selling sex.

How do present-day “zero tolerance” policies in government play into all of this?

“Zero tolerance” plays a big part. One of the main arguments in my book is that regulation shapes recreation. But the fact of the matter is that no matter what laws reformers enact, people will find a way to indulge their vices. How deep they dabble depends on the ease of access. And just as access varies in different historical periods based on the laws in place, so do the consequences when dabbling turns into something more serious.