[3] The area was to be run by a company named La Cressonière, who owned the land, financed the building and would collect rents from the occupants.

[3][5] Bousbir is the Moroccan pronunciation of the first name of Prosper Ferrieu, a French diplomat who owned the land the new quartier réservés was built on.

[6][7] The area was designed in a neo-moorish style by architect Edmond Brion to appeal to the orientalist taste of European visitors.

[6] Bousbir included 175 residences, a cinema, a sauna, cabarets, restaurants, 8 cafés, numerous boutiques, a police station and barracks, a prison, and a dispensary.

They could sample the Moroccan cuisine, see belly dances, striptease or pornographic shows, or just sit on a terrace and watch the women solicit clients while listening to oriental music.

He was influential in creating the stereotype of the "Arab African" prostitute: young, brown, exotic looking (to the European eye) topless and wearing robes or kaftans.

[6] Religious, feminist, socialist and anticolonialist factions put so much pressure on the colonial authorities that they closed the quartier réservé in April 1955.