Shotgun house

Though initially as popular with the middle class[dubious – discuss] as with poor families, the shotgun house became a symbol of poverty in the mid-20th century.

[3] The origins of both the term and the architectural form and development of the shotgun house are controversial,[4] even more so in the wake of conflicting preservation and redevelopment efforts since Hurricane Katrina.

[6][7] Alternatively, 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 during the 18th century and earlier.

[8] Citing Vlach, James Deetz claimed archaeological support for an African origin in his dig at Parting Ways, a 1790s community of freed black slaves in Plymouth, Massachusetts; his shotgun interpretation of the extremely limited evidence – two rooms that "may or may not have been unified" – has been challenged as "premature".

As many of both the builders and inhabitants were Africans by way of Haiti, Vlach maintained it was only natural they modeled the new homes after ones they left behind in their homeland.

[8] A simpler theory is that they are the typical one-room-deep floor plan popular in the rural south, rotated to accommodate narrow city lots.

[1] Such houses were built throughout hot urban areas in the South, since the style's length and outside doors at each end allowed for excellent airflow, while its narrow frontage increased the number of lots that could be fitted along a street, as was the case with the shotgun homes in Fazendeville, Louisiana, a historic, African American village that was ultimately razed during the 1960s as part of the creation of the Chalmette National Historical Park and Battlefield (now part of the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve).

[17] Shotgun houses were most popular before widespread ownership of the automobile allowed people to live farther from businesses and other destinations.

[citation needed] Typically, shotgun houses have a wood-frame structure and wood siding, although some examples exist in brick and even stone.

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.

The increased affordability of two technological innovations, the car and consumer air conditioning units, made the key advantages of the shotgun house obsolete to home buyers.

[3] The surviving urban shotgun houses suffered problems related to those typically facing the inner city neighborhoods in which they were located.

[17] 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 renewal projects.

Examples include Third Ward in Houston; Bywater in New Orleans; The Hill in St. Louis; Portland, Butchertown and Germantown in Louisville;[23] Cabbagetown in Atlanta and Village West of Coconut Grove in Miami where the last remaining 25 shotgun homes have been designated as historic structures.

[citation needed] Their role in the history of the south has become recognized; for example, in October 2001 Rice University sponsored an exhibition called "Shotguns 2001".

This three-day event featured lectures on and artistic paintings of the houses, as well as presentations and panel discussions in a neighborhood of restored shotguns.

Sometimes, a new owner will buy both homes of a double-barreled shotgun structure and combine them, to form a relatively large single house.

[25] Elements of the shotgun style have recently been seen in a number of the compact, low-occupancy structures employed in the Solar Decathlon contests held periodically in Washington, D.C.

While some are erected from panels brought to the site, many such structures consist of enclosed single or multiple units designed specifically for road transports, with multiple modules connected on site, and compact linear structures often employ multiple-use "zones" rather than specifically private areas, while retaining a linear progression of spaces.

[29][30] Shortly before his death in May 1997, Jeff Buckley rented a shotgun house in Memphis and was so enamoured with it he contacted the owner about the possibility of buying it.

[32] The John Mellencamp song "Pink Houses" was inspired when he was driving along an overpass on the way home to Bloomington, Indiana from the Indianapolis airport.

There was an old black man sitting outside his little pink shotgun house with his cat in his arms, completely unperturbed by the traffic speeding along the highway in his front yard.