On Shotgun Houses

In a 2013 interview with Rolling Stone, John Mellencamp said that he wrote “Pink Houses” driving along Interstate 65 in Indianapolis, looking out on what were likely neighborhoods of shotguns.

In many Louisiana cities, we have only to take a walk, ride a bicycle, or embark on a short drive to see a house design simultaneously so old and so modern that the sight of it makes us smile. I’m talking, of course, about the shotgun house.

The Origins

Scholars in the field of vernacular architecture apply scientific names to this humble structure, its origins, and its future, but the shotgun doesn’t lend itself to high church language. The structure’s very simplicity has allowed the design to survive since its origins in West Africa, its passage through the Caribbean and to Haiti, and its ultimate landfall in New Orleans in the early 1800s.

The shotgun house design thrived in New Orleans following two disastrous fires in the late eighteenth century. Building codes required wooden houses to be narrow so that there was room between the houses built on small lots. The space made it harder for fire to spread, so the thinking went, and the Spanish Cabildo (or city council) was forced to acknowledge that such wooden dwellings were necessary, as poor individuals could not afford expensive bricks and tile roofs.

The structure’s very simplicity has allowed the design to survive since its origins in West Africa, its passage through the Caribbean and to Haiti, and its ultimate landfall in New Orleans in the early 1800s.

The Architecture

Usually no more than twelve feet wide on a city lot often no more than thirty feet wide, the Louisiana shotgun increased substantially in popularity with the influx of refugees from Saint-Domingue/modern Haiti following the Haitian Revolution. Having encountered the design in the Caribbean, the free people of color who came to New Orleans from Saint-Domingue built many shotguns for themselves and others in the early nineteenth century. By the 1830s, the dwellings were also being utilized for factory, farm, and railroad workers. Usually three or four rooms deep but as few as two, one behind the other, the shotgun’s front and back doors often had transom windows, which theoretically provided good air circulation via a cross-breeze (though architects argue this point). For some working poor, the house type afforded the chance at a decent home, even ownership, close to where the house builder made his or her living.

[Read about the efforts of historic building preservationists in New Orleans here.]

Beyond the South

Throughout the nineteenth century, many New Orleans residents resettled in upriver cities such as Louisville and built their versions of shotguns. By 1900, local carpenters were looking at pattern books to build them. By 1910, pattern books featured the California bungalow, or Craftsman-style house, which included designs almost indistinguishable from shotguns.

“These were adopted by local builders, many of whom, perhaps, had never seen an actual shotgun,” explained scholar and anthropologist Jay D. Edwards.

Simple and inexpensive to build, the shotgun spread by the hands of carpenters. In the nineteenth century, New Orleans manufacturers of pre-fab shotguns, including Roberts and Co. and Samuels and West, shipped house kits by barge up the Mississippi River. Sears and Roebuck and the railroads had their own, non-folk versions of the shotgun.

We think of shotguns as Southern, vernacular designs—vernacular defined as structures built by ordinary people of a particular region—but according to Edwards, shotguns (or variations on the style) are found from Texas to east of the Rockies; from the Midwest to the Atlantic Coast. The design followed the rivers North and West from New Orleans, then later traveled more widely via railroad. “Probably any town in which building of inexpensive houses was going on between around 1880 to 1920,” Edwards said.

We think of shotguns as Southern, vernacular designs—vernacular defined as structures built by ordinary people of a particular region—but according to Edwards, shotguns (or variations on the style) are found from Texas to east of the Rockies; from the Midwest to the Atlantic Coast.

The Name

One suggestion for how the shotgun may have got its name is attributed to the kind of saw used to cut rough lumber. Mill hands called the piece of equipment the “shotgun saw” or simply, “the shotgun”. The more popular story is the idea that “You can fire a shotgun through the house, and the blast will pass through the front door and out the back without hitting anything.” Assuming, of course, that the house is devoid of people, animals, and furniture, and the shotgun is on full choke. Edwards also pointed out that many shotguns do not have aligned doorways, shooting another hole in this popular theory. “People invent explanations (folk etymologies) when they see something curious and unfamiliar,” Edwards explained.

The more popular story is the idea that “You can fire a shotgun through the house, and the blast will pass through the front door and out the back without hitting anything.” Assuming, of course, that the house is devoid of people, animals, and furniture, and the shotgun is on full choke.

[Read about Louisiana Landmarks Society's 2020 Preservation Awards here.]

Another possible source for the shotgun’s name is derived from the West African name for a small house where men meet to talk. “Togu na” (house of talk), some believe, might have become “shotgun”, as George Washington University professor and author John Vlach asserted in his dissertation on the subject. The origin of the name remains a somewhat disputed topic of conversation for anthropological happy hour.

The Future of Shotguns

When I set out to write a book about shotguns, I thought it might encourage builders to look at this old design as a way to the future. I still think it a good design for first-time homeowners looking to build small houses on narrow, urban lots.

Could the shotgun be an urban starter home, a larger version of the tiny house?

“It depends,” Edwards said. “In New Orleans, shotguns are constantly being remodeled. ‘Singlization’ is the remaking of doubles into larger, single family residences, and it has become very popular over the past thirty years or so.” Each large city has its shotgun enthusiasts, he said, like the PRC (Preservation Resource Center) in New Orleans, who Edwards credits with helping save many of the houses from demolition. “In general, though, completely new shotguns are an unusual phenomenon.”

Still, he told me that he is not surprised that the popular press, internet, and television house shows think the shotgun “trend” is making a comeback. “It’s never gone away,” he said.

Though the cost of lumber is high these days, the shotgun lives on—in historic neighborhoods throughout the South, and far beyond. It is its own best advocate: a charmingly practical, simple shelter for the right people at the right time.