MANNERS & MORALS: The Wages of Sin

The most luxurious bordello which the U.S. ever saw was Chicago’s Everleigh Club. It was run by the Virginia-born Everleigh sisters, Minna and Ada, two corseted women who insisted on being treated as gentlewomen at all times.

The Everleigh Club flourished from 1900 to 1911 in a 50-room mansion in Chicago’s famed Levee. It boasted gold spittoons, silk drapes, thick rugs, expensive statuary and paintings, a gilded piano, and 40 specially made brass and marble beds. Little fountains squirted perfume into its rooms at regular intervals. Its dinners sometimes cost $100 a plate and were served on gold-edged china. Champagne arrived in golden buckets.

The club’s “young ladies” wore evening gowns, and frowned at any mention of cash—checks were more refined. Customers who did not spend at least $50 a night—and the sisters considered $100 a nicer sum—were gently told not to return.

When Reform Mayor Carter Harrison closed them up in 1911, the sisters had $1,000,000 in cash and a small fortune in furniture and fittings. They dropped the name Everleigh, called themselves Lester, and went to Manhattan.

There they lived in quiet and almost anonymous grandeur, writing poetry, attending first nights, and occasionally taking European tours. Though they kept their gilded piano, they never mentioned the old days. Said Minna: “We like to meet old friends, but not old customers.”

Last week Minna died at 80, a wealthy and dignified dowager. Ada sent her body to Virginia for a burial befitting a Southern gentlewoman.