White's exact date of birth is unknown. She was born on a farm near
Selma, Alabama, but claimed to be an immigrant from the
West Indies. Publicity from about 1906 claimed that she was 31 years old; however, she may have actually been somewhat older. She was of mixed race and enjoyed, for a time, an affluence rare for Creoles of color. In 1906, she ran into financial difficulties leaving her destitute, and moved to
California. She commuted back and forth between California and
Louisiana several times over the course of her career and kept a high profile until the demise of Storyville. The success of Mahogany Hall made her one of the only black self-made millionaires at the beginning of the century. Jazz historian Al Rose sought documentation of her death, and believed that she died at the residence of former madam Willie Piazza in 1931. However, a teller at the national bank of New Orleans reported that, in 1941, White made a withdrawal. Otherwise, little information about her post-Storyville life is known.
Mahogany Hall Until forcible closure in 1917, White ran a sumptuous '
Octoroon Parlour' known as Mahogany Hall, located at 235
Basin Street.. The four-story house reportedly cost $40,000 to build (about $1 million in 2008 dollars). In 1929, the structure sold for $11,000. According to publicity of the time, Mahogany Hall housed 40 women. The official brochure for the house also stated that it had five parlors (one of which was a 'Mirrored Parlor') and fifteen bedrooms, each with its own adjoining bathroom. Famous Storyville photographer
E. J. Bellocq's surviving photographs of the house attest to its abundance of elegant furnishings, huge chandeliers and potted ferns. The building housed several expensive oil paintings,
Tiffany stained glass windows and other works of art. One of the things that set Mahogany Hall apart at the time was its refusal to play by the racial segregation laws of the time, and it was the only interracial brothel in New Orleans. It deliberately hired both white and black prostitutes. Mahogany Hall served as a House for the Unemployed in the mid-1940s but was demolished in 1949. The building was one of the last serving brothel structures in the area to be demolished. In addition to Mahogany Hall, White operated an adjacent drinking establishment at 1200 Bienville Street on the corner of Basin, called "Lulu White's Saloon". The Saloon opened in 1912 and, with the onset of
Prohibition, changed to a soft drink bar. Throughout the twenties, White was brought in on charges of violating the
Volstead Act. On March 5, 1929, the
Mahogany Hall Stomp a song dedicated to Lulu White's
Mahogany Hall was written by Spencer Williams and first recorded by
Louis Armstrong and the Savoy Ballroom Five and released around April 1929. That same year Lulu sold the Bienville property to New Orleans businessman Leon Heymann. White's Saloon building on Bienville Street was one of the handful of Storyville buildings to survive past the 1940s, but was extensively damaged during
Hurricane Betsy in 1965, losing its second story; the ground floor remains in modified condition as a one-story building. ==Historical significance==