Battle Row and Fighting Alley (Little Rock)

Battle Row, as it was known in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was the commercial warehouse district of Little Rock (Pulaski County), though it was better known as a vice district. The row, located near the steamboat landing between Rock and Commerce streets, contained bars, gambling houses, and “houses of ill-fame,” or brothels. These sites of vice shared Water Street with the warehouses that stored goods brought in on the steamboats that docked nearby on the Arkansas River. Little Rock’s reputation for housing businesses of ill-repute preceded statehood, though the first mention of Battle Row in the press was in 1842, when “No. 1 Battle Row” was listed as an address to purchase lead. As suggested by its name, Battle Row was notorious for frequent brawls and other criminal activity.

In 1848, the Little Rock City Council passed an ordinance to declare all bawdy houses, or brothels, as nuisances. This ordinance “authorized [police] to remove such nuisances.” However, there is little to suggest that the ordinance was heavily enforced. Years after the ordinance was passed, officials continued to lament the vice prevalent in Little Rock’s district by the river.

The end of the Civil War in 1865 brought a drastic increase over the following years to Little Rock’s commercial sex industry. As more brothels opened, Little Rock’s commercial sex industry grew, and “Fighting Alley” emerged. It was adjacent to Battle Row, in an alley on Elm Street. Given their close proximity and corresponding reputations, locals frequently used Battle Row and Fighting Alley interchangeably. Locals also referred to the area as “Hell’s Half-acre,” “the Natchez-Under-the-Hill” of Little Rock, and “the Five Points” of Little Rock.” Women such as Kate Merrick and Kate Marsh became known as notorious “keepers,” a term used to refer to women who owned brothels.

The demographic make-up of Battle Row and Fighting Alley was frequently reported on in the post–Civil War era. News outlets reported that the majority of the inhabitants of the district were Black, while most of the bordellos were owned by white women. In 1870, there were nineteen women labeled on the federal census as prostitutes in Little Rock; of these, all but three were white. However, a group of three bordellos collectively called “The Owl’s Nest” reportedly served as a “Black bagnio,” and police tended to target this with much more vigor than they did any of the white counterparts.

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, as people were grappling with how to combat social evils, officials suggested the implementation of various methods to regulate vice. Fort Smith (Sebastian County), for example, passed an ordinance to contain all brothels to a select few blocks of the city. Keepers in Fort Smith’s segregated district were required to obtain licenses to operate their businesses. While the city of Little Rock never established a segregated district by any official decree, informal methods served much the same purpose. City officials often referred to Battle Row and Fighting Alley as “the segregated district,” and went as far as to issue orders to prevent telephone companies from doing business with any place of ill-repute.

In 1879, when the Little Rock City Council met to discuss a petition filed by Kate Merrik to lower the licensing fee for her dance house, one alderman spoke in support of the petition, stating that lower fees would “keep them where they belong,” (i.e., in the district relegated for vice). In 1895, Governor William Meade Fishback seemed to advocate for segregated districts, stating that closing the “sewers of men’s animal passions” would cause the “social evil” to infiltrate the homes of civil society.

Debates on the merits of segregating vice continued into the early twentieth century. Meanwhile, Little Rock City officials had adopted a practice of hesitant tolerance of the businesses in Battle Row and Fighting Alley. Women were brought before the courts on a regular basis to pay a fine, which was often viewed more as a kind of licensing fee for their business, and then released, usually to carry on business as usual.

In 1911, Charles Edward Taylor was inaugurated as the mayor of Little Rock after a close race, during which he campaigned on the promise to create “a bigger, better, cleaner and more progressive city.” Before Taylor had completed his first year in office, he announced the creation of the Little Rock Vice Commission to study and provide recommendations on how to address the city’s problems. This announcement closely followed the release of Chicago’s report on vice, titled “The Social Evil in Chicago.” Taylor closely modeled Little Rock’s study on the studies conducted in Chicago and Minneapolis.

The commission completed its report in 1913, wherein the commissioners reported that there were “19 white houses of ill-fame, all run by women, and located in a segregated district in the eastern part of the city…bounded on the north by the river.” The commissioners recommended that Taylor issue an order to shutter all brothels and close Little Rock’s red-light district. In June, Taylor notified police that no brothels would be allowed to remain open past August and that officials were no longer permitted to accept payment from the keepers they arrested.

In tandem with the Little Rock Vice Commission, Taylor also created the Little Rock Colored Vice Commission to study and report on vice activities in the city’s Black communities. The Colored Vice Commission was reportedly “unable to find any licensed or police regulated houses of prostitution,” though they noted that “there are many boarding and rooming houses to which suspicion points strongly as places where a great deal of vice is practiced.” The Colored Vice Commission ultimately recommended that the City of Little Rock create more leisure and recreation opportunities for the Black communities to save people “from mischief and from temptation.”

Although August 1913 brought the end of Little Rock’s red-light district, it did not bring an end to transactional sex in the city. Instead of brothels, sex workers continued to sell sex in alternative settings, such as hotels.

For additional information:
“Fighting Alley.” Arkansas Gazette, February 20, 1872, p. 4.

“The Five Points of Little Rock.” Arkansas Gazette, July 28, 1869, 4.

“Hell’s Half-acre.” Arkansas Gazette, January 16, 1872, p. 4.

Little Rock Vice Commission. Report of the Little Rock Vice Commission, May 20, 1913: And the Order of Mayor Chas. E. Taylor to Close All Resorts in Little Rock by August 25, 1913. Little Rock: 1913. Online at https://archive.org/details/reportoflittlero00litt (accessed February 4, 2026).