NAUGHTY SECOND SOUTH Issue 17 Volume 2 18 Aug 2005 Salt Lake Metro

NAUGHTY SECOND SOUTH

Plum Alley SLC's Chinatown

Is it me or was Salt Lake City hornier in the olden days? There were whore houses and saloons all over the place. The majority of Salt Lake’s sex trade, before the building of the Stockades, however was located on Blocks 70 and 57 in the heart of downtown. Before the mid 20th century development of Blocks 70 and 57, several streets and alleys crisscrossed them. Commercial Street, Franklin Street, Victoria Alley and Plum Alley have all been paved asunder but just imagine the sexual energy amassed there.

  

Commercial Street, now named Regent, was a rip roaring bawdy thoroughfare that ran north-south through Block 70 between 100 and 200 South. Oriental Plum Alley ran just east of it, near Carl Jr’s parking lot.  Franklin Street lay south of Commercial Street and the venereal Victoria Alley ran east-west from State Street to Main Street. All these streets, being on the interior of the blocks, allowed "disreputable" businesses to be “relatively less visible and obnoxious to passersby than they would have been on the outside streets of the block.”

Commercial Street SLC

Commercial Street, (now Regent Street)  originally housed two buildings used as brothels on during the late 1800's and early 1900's. "Commercial Street was created in 1871, one of the first streets to be cut through Salt Lake City's large city blocks." By the 1880's the "Salt Lake Tribune" referred to the street as "a resort of gamblers and fast women" and, according to the "Deseret News", the occupants of Commercial Street were "the demi-monde, the male parasite, the dope fiend, the gambler and the begger." In 1893 a two-story structure was built by Gustav S. Holmes at 167 Regent Street and in 1899 a similar structure was built by Stephen Hayes at 169 Regent Street. The second floor of each building was a "parlor house," so named because prostitutes ordinarily received their customers in a common parlor or sitting room. The large center room was surrounded by 10 rooms, or "cribs," just large enough for a bed, wash stand, dresser, and a chair or two. The architect of the site at 169 Regent Street was Walter E. Ware, one of early Salt Lake's prominent designers. 

"In those days the hot spots of Salt Lake were located in a tidy manner on a street that ran between 1st and 2nd South and Main and State. Within the street were saloons, cafes, parlor houses, and cribs [small cubicles] that were rented nightly to the itinerant Ladies of the Calling. It was against the rules to solicit, so these soiled doves would sit at the top of the stairs and coo their invitation to, 'C'mon up, kid.'", wrote John Held Jr. a cartoonist for the Salt Lake Tribune recalling his early life in Salt Lake City.

  

Plum Alley SLC

Houses of Ill Repute came to Utah with the U.S. army and the railroad. By 1872, the infamous Kate Flint also known as Utah's first Madam,  and other prostitutes “joined the influx of miners and railroad men” and moved to Salt Lake City where she operate the first whorehouse on Commercial Street.  It was so successful that later even Gustav Holmes, the respectable director of the National Bank of the Republic, owned a building that was used as a brothel at what is now 165 Regent Street. It still stands.

  

Plum Alley was the center of Salt Lake City's tiny, but “overwhelmingly male, Chinatown”. Among all the saloons, laundry houses and opium dens was the “Big V". This brothel, located at 5 Plum Alley, had six bedrooms downstairs and ten upstairs to service Salt Lake’s randy clientele.

In 1880, Kate Flint removed to Block 57, where a narrow northern  street opened on Second South Street. Here she operated another whorehouse at 44 East 2nd Sound. This was the first brothel in Block 57, which is today dominated by the Gallivan Plaza.

  

19th Century Prostitute

Victoria Alley ran east-west through Block 57 from State Street to Main. Only twelve feet wide at its State Street entrance, the alley allowed “discreet access to the brothels and dwellings in the interior”. On the north side of Victoria Alley were rooms called cribs while a house of ill fame operated on the south side at 7 Victoria Alley. This place was managed by Helen Smith aka Dreyfus better known as  Helen Blazes. Helen Blazes was a lucrative business woman who in 1914 filed a police report that she had $3000 worth of diamonds stolen from her. Operating less than ten feet from Helen Blazes' brothel was another brothel at 243 South Main ran by Ida Wilson. Another important brothel, called the Three Deuces, stood some twenty-five feet northeast of Victoria Alley at 222 South State Street.  

Victoria Alley, like Plum Alley, was wide open to all type of “vice”. An article in 1899 showed that the police tried to force the prostitutes from Victoria Alley to Plum Alley or Commercial Street. Victoria Alley Crusade Jan. 30, 1899 A police raid in 1907 on Victoria Alley found "morphine, cocaine and opium fiends, as well as inveterate drunkards" of both sexes. The Herald Republican newspaper even claimed the residents of the Victoria Alley cribs were so degraded as to be unsexed: "Having the forms and faces of women, they have no other attributes of their sex."  The paper probably meant that crib workers “did not display gender-appropriate behavior” but could have also meant that transsexuals were employed there. Many Houses of Ill Fame also employed homosexual males who sometimes were passive partners for other men. Eureka, Utah was said to have an all male house of ill fame in the 1890’s.

A description of Victoria Alley is given in an article Councilmen Went Slumming Dec. 24, 1902 SL Tribune Another article in the Salt Lake Tribune suggests that $15,000 was being paid to the police to keep the brothels in Salt Lake City from being shut down. Only one policeman was assigned to patrol the entire area of block 57. 

In 1907, Edward Burke, an employee of the Bell Telephone Company was arrested at 235 South State, charged with an “unspeakable crime”.  He was arrested for having sex with a fifteen year old run away named Leon Young of Eureka, Utah. Young said he ran away from home because of some mistreatment by his stepfather and met Burke on Commercial Street. Burke who was described as “a fine specimen of physical manhood,” invited Young for lunch and a show. After eating, Young was invited back to Burke’s room where they had sex. According to a newspaper account Burke did not live at this rooming house but used it to “entice young boys” (teenagers). Burke was charged with “carnally (knowing) the said Leon Young, and then and there unlawfully, feloniously, wickedly, diabolically and against the order of nature with the said Leon Young did commit and perpetrate the detestable and abominable crime of Sodomy; Contrary to the provisions of the statute of the State …and against the peace and dignity of the State of Utah.” 

  

As the commerce aspects of Salt Lake City began to expand, businessmen saw the need to clean up Second South. As early as 1903 a proposal was made to move the prostitutes and sex trade to west of the railroad yards. Changing Streets Apr.1, 1903 SL Tribune  However the brothels were not closed on Victoria Alley until September 1907 when the Salt Lake Chief of Police finally ordered them closed. Houses On Victoria Alley Are Closed Sept. 12, 1907 SL Tribune.  The Tribune also pointed out that some Mormon Church leaders actually owned the buildings that housed the brothels naming Elder Joseph J Snell and Patriarch Winberg as rent collector.

By 1908 the hand writing was on the wall for all of Salt Lake’s downtown brothels when their workers were ordered to move west. Wants a Stockade For Fallen Women Jan. 22, 1908 SL Tribune The opening of the Stockades on west 2nd South  was supposed to have closed the whorehouses and cribs downtown  but in October 1908 the Salt Lake Tribune featured a column saying "Houses Are Again Running Full Blast".  

The SLC police tried insured their removal west by reportedly taking down patrons' names as well as fining the brothels. Any madam refusing to relocate was convicted in city court of keeping houses of ill fame. In effect this moral crusade to give Dora Topham a monopoly on prostitution in Salt Lake City.  Newspapers even claimed that Topham directed the police to suppress the competitive downtown brothels. The Stockade itself closed in 1911 as the Salt Lake City’s “Betterment League” decided to clear the city of vice. 

The stockade operated for three years until on September 28, 1911, Belle London unexpectedly announced, "The stockade will be closed on Thursday and the same will not be reopened again."  Some people expressed great relief while others felt very upset to "have the streets flooded with the scarlet ladies," again. Some of the former occupants accepted the offer of the Women's League, going to the Women's Rescue Station and leaving their lives of sin. Others returned to Commercial Street which continued to be a red-light district until the 1930s, or remained near 500 West 200 South, an area for prostitution until the 1980s.

B F Grant Standing far left

When Brigham F. Grant, (1857-1936) the half-brother of LDS President Heber J. Grant, became police chief of Salt Lake in 1911, he moved against all legitimate and illegitimate prostitution. Police officers visited whorehouses on State Street, Victoria Alley, Commercial Street, and elsewhere and told the madams they had thirty-six hours to shut down. Grant claimed his "particular hobby [was] to guard the young from disreputable and demoralizing influences."  However police reports from the Salt Lake Tribune show that Victoria Alley was still the location for houses of ill-repute and opium dens even in 1913 a hundred years ago.

Times were changing. By the 1920’s Salt Lake’s infamous madams, London Belle, Kate Flint, Ida Wilson, and Helen Blazes and their fine brothels and bordellos were distant memories. These places were so opulent at one time that one was even called the Palace.  My favorite however was the “Big V”.  Wouldn’t it be great if some enterprising person opened a Lesbian bar called the “Big V” after that notorious brothel at Number 5 Plum Alley? Or a dance club named “The Stockade” after Salt Lake City’s infamous red light district?