The lady burnishes
It’s common to find tourists stacked three deep around Marie Laveau’s grave, in St. Louis No. 1, New Orleans’ most celebrated cemetery. After Elvis’, in Memphis, hers is the second most visited gravesite in the States. By contrast, Josie Arlington’s former tomb, in the Metairie Cemetery, is largely ignored, but her story is as rich as any.
During the early 1900s, Storyville was a section of New Orleans zoned for legalized prostitution, and Josie Arlington was its most renowned madam. She staffed her opulent bordello, the Chateau Lobrano d’Arlington, with educated women from Europe and trained them in the arts of every fetish a man might have. She charged a then extravagant fee of $5 per hour when the going rate was just 22 cents.
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Address Metairie Cemetery, 5100 Pontchartrain Boulevard, New Orleans, LA 70124, +1 504.486.6331 | Hours Daily 7:30am–5:30pm| Tip At the nearby Odd Fellows Rest Cemetery (5055 Canal St), the elaborately designed side gate is said to possess spiritual powers. Walk up to the gate and say the name of a dead loved one five times and they will purportedly show up to answer your questions from the other side.
In 1917 the federal government shut down Storyville. The closure was made over the objections of the city. Mayor Martin Behrman pronounced, “You can make prostitution illegal, but you can’t make it unpopular.” By this time, Josie had already acquired great wealth. Learning that she intended to be buried in the exclusive Metairie Cemetery, a cartel of society wives—mortified that such a woman would be buried near their husbands or fathers—sought, unsuccessfully, to block her. Josie responded, “I wonder how many of these ladies know their husbands visit me weekly.”
In 1914 Josie was interred near the front of the cemetery in a beautiful red granite tomb with carved burning urns and a bronze statue of a woman reaching for the door. Two gravediggers swore they witnessed the statue walk off one night. Others have claimed they’ve seen the stone torches burst into real flames.
Arlington’s remains were moved to another secret location in the cemetery sometime after her death, and her exact whereabouts remain unknown. The family name on the original gravesite is now, ironically, Morales, the Spanish word for “moral character.”
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