Everleigh, Aida (1864–1960) and Minna (1866–1948)

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Everleigh, Aida (1864–1960) and Minna (1866–1948)

American madams. Name variations: for professional purposes, the name Everleigh was taken from their grandmother's letter closings, "Everly Yours"; for legitimate business, they used the name Lester; also known as The Scarlet Sisters. Born Aida (1864) and Minna (1866) Simms in Stanardsville, a small town in Greene County, Virginia (because the sisters concealed their origins, biographers have continued to mistakenly place their birth in Kentucky); Minna died on September 16, 1948; Aida died on January 3, 1960; daughters of George Montgomery Simms (a widower and successful lawyer); attended private schools; in her early 20s, Minna married an older man named Lester; Aida married his brother; both marriages ended in divorce the following year.

Two sisters ran the Everleigh Club, the most successful and most expensive bordello in American history. Attractive daughters of George Montgomery Simms, a successful lawyer, Minna and Aida Simms grew up in southern gentility; they were tutored in dancing and elocution and attended private schools. While in their early 20s, they both endured arranged marriages to brothers who were "suspicious and jealous," complained Minna, "brutes with unbearable characters." A year later, both sisters divorced. Since acting and schoolteaching were the primary careers open to women, they joined an acting troupe during the early 1890s. In 1898, they found themselves stranded in Omaha, Nebraska. With the $35,000 inherited from their father, the sisters cast about for a less risky occupation.

Omaha was then host to the Trans-Mississippi Exposition, which made for an excess of tourists and cowboys in town. Savvy in business and seeing an unfilled need, the sisters opened a posh boardinghouse. They soon learned, however, that most other boardinghouses in their district were actually bordellos, fulfilling other needs. Since the Everleigh sisters did not want to lose their investment, "it was simply a matter of doing the right thing," said Aida. So they lined up attractive women, some of them actresses from the road show, and expanded the services and decor of their house. But posh remained. There was a Tiffany stained-glass ceiling in the foyer, gilt-edged mirrors, expensive wine and champagne, and a $15,000 gold-plated piano played by a music professor in full-evening dress.

Aida was considered a business genius, the brains of the operation; Minna, with her charm and wit, was good press copy. By the end of the Exposition, they had parlayed their inheritance into $75,000, but the population of the town thinned and the Everleigh sisters decided to move on. In 1899, they went on a business tour of bordellos, canvassing New York, New Orleans and San Francisco. On the advice of Washington D.C. madam Cleo Maitland , the Everleighs settled in the redlight district in the Levee in Chicago. When they heard that the opulent house at 2131–33 South Dearborn Street—once run by Chicago's then most famous madam, the recently deceased Lizzie Allen —was available, the sisters plunked down a deposit of $70,000 for a lifetime lease. The two three-story buildings, containing 50 rooms, had been run in the interim by Effie Hankins , who was thought to be a little too lowlife for the high-class house.

Like incoming presidents, the sisters immediately redecorated and replaced the staff. Aida, who considered the previous occupants "unschooled strumpets," set about holding interviews for new personnel, promising that they would retire rich. Choosing the prettiest and classiest—no amateurs need apply—the sisters soon had a waiting list of potential employees. Impeccably dressed and swathed in "house" jewels, the 30 chosen were among America's finest: beautiful, intelligent, and classy. Four hundred women would eventually find employment in the house, and many, as Aida predicted, retired with a great deal of money or married millionaires.

The Everleigh Club ("ask the operator for Calumet 412") opened with a press conference on February 1, 1900, followed by a tour. The sisters had not held back. Two-thirds of their capital had been spent on furnishings for the dining rooms, the large salons, and the 14 special reception rooms which included the Persian Room, the Japanese Room, the Rose Parlor, the Hall of a Thousand Mirrors, the Turkish Ballroom complete with fountain, and the Gold Room, featuring gold cuspidors, gold-rimmed fishbowls, and a $15,000 gold piano. There was plush velvet everywhere, along with tuxedoed orchestras, canaries chirping in gold cages, and a 1,000-book library. Most popular was the excellent food served at the buffet, a room decked out like a plush Pullman dining car. Polly Adler , no slouch herself in the receiving department, gushed: "In every corner of the house there were always fresh roses, and on special nights Minna would have live butterflies fluttering about."

The captains of industry poured in, as did European royalty, as did celebrated athletes and actors, including John Barrymore and Gentleman Jim Corbett. An entrance fee was $50, an overnight fee $500. Tabs for an evening of comfort ran closer to $1,000. The sisters were admitted snobs, letting in only the elite; they wanted "no clerks on holiday." The less-than-affluent were not allowed, except for reporters who were pampered at reduced rates. Well aware that free advertising enhanced their business, Minna Everleigh also published an expensive brochure complete with half-tones, discreetly placed with the uppercrust; it advertised "steam heat in winter, fans in summer," along with valet service and 30 beautiful "girls" in any season. By 1902, Chicago boasted two tourist attractions: the Union stockyards and the Everleigh Club.

The sisters, said to net $120,000 a year, were always fashionably dressed and did their banking in a green velvet livery, generally accompanied by one of their beauties who sat up front like a bus ad. But there were hidden costs: $10,000 a year in bribes and protection. Chicago's notorious Big Jim Colosimo, who was married to another whorehouse madam Victoria Moresco , served as their middleman.

All this ended in 1911 when evangelists began a crusade to close the Levee. A bust-popping, attention-getting ride down Chicago's sacrosanct Michigan Avenue by Vicki Shaw (another madam, whom Minna felt had no class) didn't help the situation. When one of Minna's tasteful brochures landed by mistake, or by setup, on the mayor's desk, a special commission on vice was convened. The mayor ordered the closing of the house on October 24, 1911. Getting wind of the impending raid, the Everleigh sisters embarked on a six-month tour of Europe, having laid off their staff with six-months' severance pay. Upon their return, the sisters retired. The twosome bought a brownstone on West 70th Street in Manhattan near Central Park, furnished it with the finest from the Everleigh Club, began using the name Lester, and lived the life of respectable club women; they also formed a poetry circle. "They was more like a pair of female professors than madams," said Vicki Shaw. "They was interested in all them long-hair things." The shrewd Aida managed to steer their earnings through the Great Depression intact. The growing worth of the "house" jewels was estimated at anywhere from $200,000 to $1 million. "The Everleigh sisters made the logical retort to a business economy that discriminated against them on the basis of their sex," writes Caroline Bird in Enterprising Women; "they found a way to capitalize on the very fact that excluded them from the business world."

Just before 82-year-old Minna died on September 16, 1948, she reputedly said to a reporter: "We never hurt anybody, did we? We never robbed widows and we made no false representations, did we?" After shipping her sister's body to Roanoke, Virginia, for burial, Aida moved into a small cottage nearby; there she lived to be 95, dying on January 3, 1960. The tombstones for both are marked Lester.