In 1915, Jacksonville's bordellos became key issue in voters' choice for mayor

[thelakelander]

Great article by the Times-Union:

On the eve of the 2015 mayoral election — the most expensive mayoral race in city history — it's tempting to say that with all the negative ads and controversial issues, this also has been one of the most heated races in city history. Compared to what was happening 100 years ago, it is downright tepid.
To tell the story of the 1915 mayoral race, we could begin with any number of memorable scenes. With a rally that drew 15,000 people to downtown. With acrobats riding a bicycle on a cable strung between two of the tallest buildings in Florida. With a story that has been repeated for years about prostitutes on horseback, holding red lanterns and circling Hemming Park.

But perhaps it is best to start with one of the books of Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps on the second floor of Wayne Wood's Riverside home.

In these heavy books full of maps, Wood sees research material, the kind of information that can help take you back to a time and place. The construction of buildings. The number of stories, windows and chimneys. The type of use.

Still, some details need deciphering.

Take the map of 1913 LaVilla. While some buildings are easily identified by their label — fire station, carriage repair, wholesale liquors, livery, stables, undertaker — there are more than 60 buildings clustered on or near what was then Ward Street (now Houston Street) colored red and labeled simply as "FB." Female boarding.

These are the female boardinghouses — a cartographically correct euphemism for what they really were. Bordellos. And these bordellos played a role in the 1915 mayoral race.

The red-light district had survived the Great Fire of 1901. Although the blaze started a few blocks north of Ward Street, burning more than 90 percent of downtown — destroying 2,368 buildings in one day — the "FB" buildings remained standing. Some accused the fire department of protecting the wooden buildings on Ward Street. Historians say that wasn't the case. The wind led the fire on its path of destruction.

By 1913, the fire insurance map of LaVilla shows two large bordellos standing near the corner of Ward and Davis. "The Court" and "The Senate." Cora Crane, the famed owner of The Court, died in 1910. But a few years later business was still going strong in what the newspapers called "the restricted district." One building had once been a church where James Weldon Johnson's father preached. When the bordello district grew around it, the congregation decided to move to a new location. So a house of worship became a house of ill repute.

Start here, with this map, made in this year — because in 1913, Van C. Swearingen was elected mayor.

Swearingen wasted little time cracking down on vice, condemning the paintings of nude women that hung in many taverns and keeping minors out of the pool halls. In the middle of his term — elections were every two years — he ordered all the bordellos closed, effective June 1, 1914.

Three months later, J.E.T. Bowden – who had been the city's mayor during the Great Fire but didn't run for re-election a month after the fire — surprised many by announcing that he planned to challenge Swearingen in 1915.

In his announcement, he made a pledge that politicians are still making today. He said he would run the city like a business.

But then he said something that is hard to fathom today. He said he would allow one particular business to return to part of the city.

"I do not propose to scatter prostitution throughout the residential portion of this city ...," he said. "I am a firm believer in the segregation of what is known as the social evil, but for my thinking this evil is not such a terrible evil after all — my honest conviction is that these poor unfortunates are the greatest safety valves to society. As a rule they are beat and banged around by every new mayor coming into office, but I for one propose to give them all the protection that is possible ...

"From time immemorial, prostitution has existed and will exist to the end of time. And my way of thinking is that those entrusted with administration of law should recognize this condition and not try to prohibit but to control."

And so the stage was set for a three-act play — two primaries and a general election — with a Runyonesque cast of characters, led by a former mayor who smoked cigars, guzzled coffee and, before he was a politician, ignored county laws when he helped organize a prizefight that he said was just a "scientific glove test."

Full article: http://jacksonville.com/business/columnists/2015-03-22/story/1915-jacksonvilles-bordellos-became-key-issue-voters-choice

[urbanlibertarian]

If J.E.T. Bowden were running this year he would have my vote.