Shotgun House Architecture

A shotgun house is a narrow rectangular domestic dwelling, usually no more than about twelve feet wide, with its rooms arranged one behind the other and a door at each end, a plan popularly said to let a shotgun blast fired through the front door fly cleanly out the back. It was the most popular style of housing across the Southern United States from the end of the Civil War through the 1920s, and also appeared in Key West and Ybor City in Florida, in Texas and as far north as Chicago. Its origins are debated: architectural historian Samuel Wilson Jr traced the style to the Creole suburbs of early nineteenth century New Orleans, while folklorist John Michael Vlach argued its name descends from a Fon word from Dahomey meaning place of assembly, carried into the city by enslaved and free people of African and Haitian descent. By the mid twentieth century the shotgun house had become associated with poverty and many were lost to urban renewal, though later preservation and gentrification efforts have saved some examples.