The Home of Josie Arlington
The Home of Josie Arlington
From the archives of the Earl K. Long Library at the University of New Orleans, we have this unattributed photograph of the building at 2721 Esplanade Avenue, the residence of Josie Arlington. Born Mary Deubler in New Orleans around 1864, she was drawn into a life of prostitution at the age of seventeen by Philip Lobrano in order to support her family. Lobrano would later be arrested for the murder of her brother, Peter Deubler, but was acquitted of the crime. At the age of twenty-six she opened her first brothel at 172 Customhouse Street (Iberville Street) which she relocated to 225 North Basin Street in Storyville in 1898 shortly after it opened.
Mary took up with a clerk in the city’s Treasury Office named Tom Brady. Following a trip to the Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs she renamed her brothel and took the name Josie Arlington as her nom de guerre. Influenced by the opulence of the Arlington Hotel, Josie’s establishment was elegant and expensive. Her selection of available ladies for patrons to consider was augmented by a “live sex circus” that could be viewed for an extra fee. When her brothel was destroyed by fire in 1905, she moved into the building next door to Tom Anderson’s saloon and renamed it the Arlington Annex. She sold the business to Anderson in 1909 when she retired. Arlington died in 1914 and is buried in Metairie Cemetery.
The building was moved to its present location at 2863 Grand Route St. John in the 1920s following the purchase of the land by the Orleans Parish School Board for the proposed McDonogh No. 28 School.
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