The
shotgun house is a narrow rectangular domestic residence, usually no more than 12 feet (3.5 m) wide, with doors at each end. It was the most popular style of
houseA house is generally a shelter, building or structure that is a dwelling or place for habitation by human beings. The term includes many kinds of dwellings ranging from rudimentary huts of nomadic tribes to high-rise apartment buildings...
in the
Southern United StatesThe Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, Down South, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive region in the southeastern and south-central United States...
from the end of the
American Civil WarThe American Civil War , also known as the War Between the States and several other names, was a civil war in the United States of America. Eleven Southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America...
(1861–65), through to the 1920s. Alternate names include
shotgun shack,
shotgun hut, and
shotgun cottage. A
railroad apartmentA railroad apartment, or railroad flat, is an apartment with a series of rooms connecting to each other in a line. A hallway typically runs the length of the apartment or flat from the front door to the back door, outside each room. This is similar in design to a railway car. This usage is most...
is somewhat similar, but has a side hallway from which rooms are entered (by analogy to compartments in passenger rail cars).
The style was developed in
New OrleansNew Orleans is a major U.S. port and the largest city in the state of Louisiana. New Orleans is the center of the New Orleans Metropolitan Area, the largest metro area in the state....
, but the houses can be found as far away as Chicago, Illinois;
Key West, Florida Key West is a city in Monroe County, Florida, United States.The city encompasses the island of Key West, the part of Stock Island north of U.S. 1 , Sigsbee Park , Fleming Key , and Sunset Key...
; and
CaliforniaCalifornia is the most populous state in the United States, and the third largest by area. California is the second most populous sub-national entity in the Americas, behind only São Paulo, Brazil...
. Shotgun houses can still be found in many small southern towns. Though initially as popular with the middle class as with the poor, the shotgun house became a symbol of poverty in the mid-20th century. Opinion is now mixed: some houses are bulldozed due to
urban renewalUrban renewal is a program of land redevelopment in areas of moderate to high density urban land use. Its modern incarnation began in the late 19th century in developed nations and experienced an intense phase in the late 1940s – under the rubric of reconstruction...
, while others are beneficiaries of
historic preservationHistoric preservation or heritage conservation is a professional endeavor that seeks to preserve, conserve and protect buildings, objects, landscapes or other artifacts of historic significance...
and
gentrificationGentrification and urban gentrification denote the socio-economic, commercial, and demographic change in an urban area resulting from wealthier people buying housing property in a poor community...
.
Shotgun houses consist of three to five rooms in a row with no hallways. The term "shotgun house," which was in use by 1903 but became more common after about 1940, is often said to come from the saying that one could fire a
shotgunA shotgun is a firearm that is usually designed to be fired from the shoulder, which uses the energy of a fixed shell to fire a number of small spherical pellets called shot, or a solid projectile called a slug...
through the front door and the
pelletLead shot is a collective term for small balls of lead. It is used primarily as projectiles in shotguns, but is also used for a variety of other purposes...
s would fly cleanly through the house and out the back door (since all the doors are on the same side of the house). Another reputed source of the name is that many were built out of
crateA crate is a large shipping container, often made of wood, often used to transport large, heavy or awkward items. A crate has a self-supporting structure, with or without sheathing...
s, i.e. old shotgun-shell crates, and those made for other purposes. However, the name's origin may actually reflect an
AfricaAfrica is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area. With a billion people in 61 territories, it accounts for about 14.8% of the...
n architectural heritage, perhaps being a corruption of a term such as
to-gun, which means "place of assembly" in the Southern Dohomey Fon area.
Several variations of shotgun houses allow for additional features and space, and many have been updated to the needs of future generations of owners. The oldest shotgun houses were built without indoor plumbing, and this was often added later (sometimes crudely). "Double-barrel" shotgun houses consist of two houses sharing a central wall, allowing more houses to be fitted into an area. "Camelback" shotgun houses include a second floor at the rear of the house. In some cases, the entire
floor planA floor plan, or floorplan, in architecture and building engineering is a diagram, usually to scale, of the relationships between rooms, spaces and other physical features at one level of a structure....
is changed during remodeling to create hallways.
History
Shotgun houses were most popular before widespread ownership of the
automobileAn automobile, motor car or car is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor...
allowed people to live farther from businesses and other destinations. Building lots were kept small out of necessity, 30 feet (9 m) wide at most. An influx of people to cities, both from rural areas in America and from foreign countries, all looking to fill emerging manufacturing jobs, created the high demand for housing in cities. Shotgun houses were thus built to fulfill the same need as rowhouses in
NortheasternThe Northeastern United States is a region of the United States. According to the definition used by the United States Census Bureau, the Northeast region consists of nine states: the New England states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut; and the...
cities. Several were usually built at a time by a single builder, contributing to their relatively similar appearance.
The New Orleans housing taxation structure contributed to the design of the shotgun in its region. The shotgun utilized a minimized lot frontage, when taxes were based on lot frontage, then when that was subverted by untaxable second floor additions of space AKA the "Camelback", the tax was shifted to number of rooms, which equalized the taxation per square footage within a property. Consequently, neither design contains closets or hallways, which were counted as rooms.
Folklorist and professor John Michael Vlach has suggested that the origin of the building style and the name itself may trace back to Haiti and Africa in the 1700s and earlier. The name may have originated from the Africa's Southern Dohomey
FonFON is a company that runs a system of shared wireless networks. The business was launched in November 2005.People can become members by agreeing to let FON share their wireless Internet connection...
area term, to-gun, which means, "place of assembly." The description, probably used in New Orleans by Afro Haitian slaves, may have been misunderstood and reinterpreted as "Shotgun." Another, frequently repeated theory suggests that the term "shotgun" is a reference to the idea that if you open all the doors to the house, the pellets fired from a shotgun would fly cleanly from one end to the other (though the origin of this description is unknown). Also a common understanding of the name is that they were built of discarded
crateA crate is a large shipping container, often made of wood, often used to transport large, heavy or awkward items. A crate has a self-supporting structure, with or without sheathing...
s, i.e. shotgun-shell and other crates.
The theory behind the earlier African origin is tied to the
history of New OrleansThe history of New Orleans, Louisiana traces its development from its founding by the French, through its period under Spanish control, then back to French rule before being sold to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase...
. In 1803 there were 1,355 free blacks in the city. By 1810 blacks outnumbered whites 10,500 to 4,500. This caused a housing boom. As many of both the builders and inhabitants were Africans by way of Haiti, historians believe it is only natural they modeled the new homes after ones they left behind in their homeland. Many surviving Haitian dwellings of the period, including about 15 percent of the housing stock of
Port-au-PrincePort-au-Prince is the capital and largest city of the Caribbean nation of Haiti.The city of Port-au-Prince faces the Gulf of Gonâve, at . The bay on which the city lies, which acts as a natural harbor, has sustained economic activity since the civilizations of the Arawaks...
, resemble the single shotgun houses of New Orleans.
The shotgun house was popularized in New Orleans. The style was definitely built there by 1832, though there is evidence that houses sold in the 1830s were built 15 to 20 years earlier. The houses were built throughout hot
urban areaAn urban area is characterized by higher population density and vast human features in comparison to areas surrounding it. Urban areas may be cities, towns or conurbations, but the term is not commonly extended to rural settlements such as villages and hamlets.Urban areas are created and further...
s in the
SouthThe Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, Down South, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive region in the southeastern and south-central United States...
, since the style's length allowed for excellent airflow, while its narrow frontage increased the number of lots that could be fitted along a street. It was used so frequently that some southern cities estimate that, even today, 10% or more of their housing stock is composed of shotgun houses.
The earliest known use of "shotgun house" as a name for these dwellings is in a classified advertisement in
the Atlanta Journal ConstitutionThe Atlanta Journal-Constitution is the only major daily newspaper in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, and its suburbs. The AJC, as it is called, is the flagship publication of Cox Enterprises. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is the result of the merger between The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta...
, August 30, 1903: "Two 3-room houses near the railroad yards at Simpson st. crossing, rent $12 a month to good tenants who pay in advance; price $1,200 on terms or $100 cash, balance $15 a month; a combination of investment and savings bank: these are not shacks, but good shot-gun houses in good repair." While this advertisement seems to present shotgun houses as a desirable
working-classWorking class is a term used in academic sociology and in ordinary conversation to describe, depending on context and speaker, those employed in lower tier jobs as measured by skill, education, and compensation....
housing alternative, by 1929 a Tennessee court noted that shotgun houses could not be rented to any other than a very poor class of tenants. After the
Great DepressionThe Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, few shotgun houses were built, and existing ones went into decline. By the late 20th century, shotgun houses in some areas were being restored as housing and for other uses.
Shotgun houses were often initially built as rental properties, located near manufacturing centers or railroad hubs, to provide housing choices for workers. Owners of factories frequently built the houses to rent specifically to employees, usually for a few dollars a month. By the late 20th century, however, shotguns were often owner-occupied. For example, 85% of the houses (many of them shotgun) in New Orleans'
Lower Ninth WardLower Ninth Ward is a neighborhood of the city of New Orleans. As the name implies, it is part of the Ninth Ward of New Orleans. The Lower Ninth Ward is often thought of as the entire area within New Orleans downriver of the Industrial Canal, however the City Planning Commission divides this area...
were owner-occupied.
Characteristics
The rooms of a shotgun house are lined up one behind the other, typically a living room is first, then one or two bedrooms, and finally a kitchen in back. Early shotgun houses were not built with bathrooms, but in later years a bathroom with a small hall was built before the last room of the house, or a side addition was built off the kitchen. Some shotguns may have as few as two rooms.
Chimneys tended to be built in the interior, allowing the front and middle rooms to share a chimney with a fireplace opening in each room. The kitchen usually has its own chimney.
Other than the basic floor layout, shotgun houses have many standard features in common. The house is almost always close to the street, sometimes with a very short front yard, and no
porchA porch is a structure attached to a building, forming a covered entrance to a vestibule or doorway. It is external to the walls of the main building proper, but may be enclosed by screen, latticework, broad windows, or other light frame walls extending from the main structure.There are various...
. In some cases, the house has no front yard and is actually flush with the
sidewalkA sidewalk , pavement , footpath , platform or footway is a path for pedestrians that is situated alongside a road or a paved...
. The original steps were wood, but were often replaced with permanent concrete steps.
A sign of its New Orleans heritage, the house is usually raised two to three feet off the ground. There is a single door and window in the front of the house, and often a side door leading into the back room, which is slightly wider than the rest of the house. The front door and window often were originally covered by decorative shutters. Side walls may or may not have windows; rooms not adjoining the front nor back door will generally have at least one window even when the houses are built very close together.
Typically, shotgun houses have a wood frame structure and wood siding, although some examples exist in brick and even stone. Many shotguns, especially older or less expensive ones, have flat roofs that end at the front wall of the house. In houses built after 1880, the roof usually overhangs the front wall, and there is usually a
gableA gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of a sloping roof. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system being used and aesthetic concerns...
above the overhang. The overhang is usually supported by decorative wooden brackets, and sometimes contains
cast ironCast iron usually refers to grey iron, but also identifies a large group of ferrous alloys, which solidify with a eutectic. The colour of a fractured surface can be used to identify an alloy. White cast iron is named after its white surface when fractured, due to its carbide impurities which...
ventilators.
The rooms are well-sized, and have relatively high ceilings for cooling purposes, as when warm air can rise higher, the lower part of a room tends to be cooler. Rooms usually have some decoration such as
moldingsMolding
or moulding
is a strip of material with various cross sections used to cover transitions between surfaces or for decoration. It is traditionally made from solid milled wood or plaster but may be made from plastic or reformed wood...
, ceiling medallions, and elaborate woodwork. In cities like New Orleans, local industries supplied elaborate but mass-produced brackets and other ornaments for shotgun houses that were accessible even to homeowners of modest means.
Variations
A conventional one-story freestanding shotgun house is often called a single shotgun. Many common variations exist in high quantity, and are often actually more common than the single shotgun in cities.
- Double Shotgun, also called double-barrel shotgun, essentially two shotgun houses connected to each other and sharing a central wall. They are a form of Semi-detached
Semi-detached housing consists of pairs of houses built side by side as units sharing a party wall and usually in such a way that each house's layout is a mirror image of its twin...
housing. The double shotgun requires less land per household than the traditional shotgun and was used extensively in poorer areas because it could be built with fewer materials and use less land per occupant. It was first seen in New Orleans in 1854.
- Camelback house, also called Humpback, a variation of the Shotgun that has a partial second floor over the rear of the house. Camelback houses were built in the later period of shotgun houses. The floor plan and construction is very similar to the traditional shotgun house, except there are stairs in the back room leading up the second floor. The second floor, or "hump", contains one to four rooms. Because it was only a partial second story, most cities only taxed it as a single-story house - in fact this was a key reason for their construction.
- Double Width Shotgun, is where an extra large and wide shotgun house would be built on two lots instead of one. These were typically built one to a block in locations where a single person would first buy the entire city block
A city block, urban block or simply block is a central element of urban planning and urban design. A city block is the smallest area that is surrounded by streets. City blocks are the space for buildings within the street pattern of a city, they form the basic unit of a city's urban fabric...
during development, then build themselves a double sized home and then subdivide the rest of the block with single lot homes.
- "North shore" houses, shotgun houses with wide verandas on three sides. They were so named because most were built on the north shore of New Orleans' Lake Pontchartrain
Lake Pontchartrain is a brackish estuary located in southeastern Louisiana. It is the second-largest saltwater lake in the United States, after the Great Salt Lake in Utah, and the largest lake in Louisiana....
as summer homes for wealthy whites.
- The term may also refer to a different structure, common in rural
Rural areas are large and isolated areas of a country, often with low population density.About 91 percent of the rural population now earn salaried incomes, often in urban areas...
areas and small towns, which takes the form of a small, long, free-standing house, generally made of wood, with no hallways. Unlike the larger terraced version, this is generally a single-storied dwelling, but it was still associated with povertyPoverty is the condition of lacking basic human needs such as nutrition, clean water, health care, clothing, and shelter because of the inability to afford them. This is also referred to as absolute poverty or destitution...
and popular partially because of its ability to make hot weather more comfortable. It was most prevalent along waterways and bayous in rural Louisiana.
A combination, the Double Camelback shotgun, also exists. A minor variation is a side door allowing access to the kitchen, or a porch along the side extending almost the length of the house.
Decline and legacy
The construction of shotgun houses slowed and eventually stopped during the early 20th century. The affordability of two technological innovations, the car and consumer
air conditioningAn air conditioner is a home appliance, system, or mechanism designed to dehumidify and extract heat from an area, or provide heat to an area. The cooling is done using a simple refrigeration cycle...
units, made the key advantages of the shotgun house obsolete to home buyers. After
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, shotgun houses had very little appeal to those building or buying new houses, as car-oriented modern
suburbSuburbs are defined in various different ways around the world. They can be the residential areas of a large city, or separate residential communities within commuting distance of a city. Some suburbs have a degree of political autonomy, and most have lower population density than inner city...
s were built en masse. Few shotgun houses have been built in America since the war, although the concept of a simple, single-level floor plan lived on in
ranch-style houseRanch-style houses is a uniquely American domestic architectural style. First built in the 1920s, the ranch style was extremely popular in the United States during the 1940s to 1970s, as new suburbs were built for the Greatest Generation and later the Silent Generation...
s.
The surviving urban shotgun houses suffered problems related to those typically facing the
inner cityThe inner city is the central area of a major city or metropolis. In the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Ireland, the term is often applied to the poorer parts of the city centre and is sometimes used as a euphemism with the connotation of being an area, perhaps a ghetto or slum, where...
neighborhoods in which they were located. The
flightWhite flight is the sociologic and demographic term denoting the trend wherein white people flee desegregated urban communities, and move to other places like commuter towns; although an American coinage, “white flight” denotes like behavior in other countries. In the U.S. the Brown v...
of affluent residents to the suburbs, absentee owners, and a shortage of mortgage lenders for inner city residents led to the deterioration of shotgun houses in the mid and late 20th century. Confusing ownership, passed down within a family over several generations, also contributed to many houses sitting vacant for years.
Though shotguns are sometimes perceived as being housing prevalent in poor
African AmericanAfrican Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black populations of Africa. In the United States, the terms are generally used for Americans with at least partial Sub-Saharan African ancestry...
neighborhoods, many were originally built heavily in segregated white neighborhoods. Many of these neighborhoods became predominantly black during the 1950s and 1960s, but many others did not and remain predominantly white.
Regardless of who was living in them, from World War II until the 1980s, shotguns came to be widely viewed as substandard housing and a symbol of poverty, and they were demolished by many
urban renewalUrban renewal is a program of land redevelopment in areas of moderate to high density urban land use. Its modern incarnation began in the late 19th century in developed nations and experienced an intense phase in the late 1940s – under the rubric of reconstruction...
projects. This thinking is no longer so prevalent, with cities such as Houston and
CharlotteCharlotte is the largest city in the state of North Carolina and the seat of Mecklenburg County. Charlotte's population was estimated to be 687,456 in 2008, making it the 18th largest city in the United States. Residents of Charlotte are referred to as "Charlotteans"...
establishing "Shotgun Historic Districts". Shotgun houses have even been praised as quality and cost-effective cultural assets that promote a distinctive urban life. Other cities, such as
Macon, GeorgiaMacon is a city located in central Georgia, USA. It is among the largest metropolitan areas in Georgia, and the county seat of Bibb County. A small portion of the city extends into Jones County. It lies near the geographic center of Georgia, approximately 85 miles south of Atlanta, hence the...
, experimented with renovating shotgun houses for low-income residents, but found that it is cheaper and more effective to tear them down and build new housing.
There are many large neighborhoods in older American cities of the south which still contain a high concentration of shotgun houses today. Examples include
BywaterBywater is a neighborhood of the city of New Orleans. A subdistrict of the Bywater District Area, its boundaries as defined by the City Planning Commission are: Florida Avenue to the north, the Industrial Canal to the east, the Mississippi River to the south and Franklin Avenue, St. Claude Avenue...
in New Orleans;
PortlandPortland is a neighborhood and former independent town two miles northwest of downtown Louisville, Kentucky. In its early days it was the largest of the six major settlements at the Falls of the Ohio River, the others being Shippingport and Louisville in Kentucky and New Albany, Clarksville, and...
, Butchertown, and
GermantownGermantown is a neighborhood three miles southeast of downtown Louisville, Kentucky, USA. Germantown is also a general term for an area of Louisville from the Original Highlands to St Joseph and Bradley neighborhoods that were predominantly settled by Germans...
in
LouisvilleLouisville is Kentucky's largest city and county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's estimated population as of 2008 was 713,877 , with a population of 1,244,696 in the Louisville...
; and
CabbagetownCabbagetown is a neighborhood in Atlanta, Georgia located south of Inman Park, east of Oakland Cemetery, north of Grant Park and west of Reynoldstown. It includes Cabbagetown District, a historic district listed on the U.S...
in Atlanta. Their role in the history of the south has become recognized; for example,
Rice UniversityWilliam Marsh Rice University is a private coeducational research university located in Houston, Texas, United States...
recently sponsored an exhibition called "Shotguns 2001", which featured artistic paintings of the houses and lectures, in a neighborhood of restored shotguns.
In some shotgun-dominated neighborhoods, property value has become quite high, leading to
gentrificationGentrification and urban gentrification denote the socio-economic, commercial, and demographic change in an urban area resulting from wealthier people buying housing property in a poor community...
. Sometimes, a new owner will buy both homes of a double-barreled shotgun structure, and combine them to form a relatively large single house. Shotguns are also often combined to renovate them into office or storage space.
Southern culture
The shotgun house plays a role in the folklore and culture of the south. Superstition holds that
ghostA ghost has been defined as the disembodied spirit or soul of a deceased person, although in popular usage the term refers only to the apparition of such a person...
s and
spiritThe English word "spirit" has many differing meanings and connotations, but commonly refers to a supernatural being or essence — transcendent and therefore metaphysical in its nature: the Concise Oxford Dictionary defines it as "the non-physical part of a person"...
s are attracted to shotgun houses because they may pass straight through them, and that some houses were built with doors intentionally misaligned to deter these spirits. They also often serve as a convenient symbol of life in the south.
Elvis PresleyElvis Aaron Presley was an American singer and actor. A cultural icon, he is commonly known simply as Elvis and is also sometimes referred to as The King of Rock 'n' Roll or The King....
was born in a shotgun house, the Neville Brothers grew up in one, and Robert Johnson is said to have died in one. Shortly before his death in May 1997,
Jeff BuckleyJeffrey Scott Buckley , raised as Scotty Moorhead, was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. He was the son of Tim Buckley, also a musician...
rented a shotgun house in Memphis and was so enamoured with it he contacted the owner about the possibility of buying it.
Dream Brother, David Browne's biography on Jeff and
Tim BuckleyTimothy Charles Buckley III was an American vocalist and musician who went through many distinct phases spanning the late 1960s and early 1970s, in which he incorporated aspects of folk, jazz, psychedelia, funk, soul, and avant-garde rock...
, opens with a description of this shotgun house and Jeff's fondness of it.
See also
- Culture of the Southern United States
The Culture of the Southern United States, or Southern Culture is a subculture of the United States that's perhaps America's most culturally distinct, in both the minds of its residents and those in other parts of the country...
- List of house types
- Mobile home
Mobile homes or static caravans are prefabricated homes built in factories, rather than on site, and then taken to the place where they will be occupied. They are usually transported by tractor-trailers over public roads to sites which are often in rural areas or high-density developments. In some...
- Railroad apartment
A railroad apartment, or railroad flat, is an apartment with a series of rooms connecting to each other in a line. A hallway typically runs the length of the apartment or flat from the front door to the back door, outside each room. This is similar in design to a railway car. This usage is most...
- Terraced house
In architecture and city planning, a terrace or row house or townhouse is a style of medium-density housing that originated in Europe in the late 17th century, where a row of identical or mirror-image houses share side walls...
External links