Shotgun house

The shotgun house (sometimes named shotgun shack , shotgun cottage or railroad apartments ) is a type of American Maison . In the Southern of the United States, this style is that of the major part of the houses built between the end of the American Civil War (1861 - 1865) and the Années 1920.

This type of house initially appeared with the Orleans News, but one also finds some with Chicago, in California or with Key West, in Florida. The shotgun houses remain today still the individual residences most widespread in many cities of the South of the United States. In the beginning, the shotgun house was adopted as well by the Middle-class as by more disadvantaged social layers, but it became, starting from the Années 1950, a symbol of poverty. The opinion as for these dwellings and their to become is shared today: certain houses are shaven within the framework of programs of Urban renewal, while others are seen classified sites protected within the framework from measurements from safeguarding from the national historical heritage, and that others still are renovated at the time of the gentrification certain districts.

The shotgun houses are characterized by their rectangular structure, their form in length, their narrowness in width (3,50 meters at most) and the presence of doors at the two ends of the house, with before and with the back. They comprise from three to five parts placed in row, without corridor nor hall. Knowing that the term shotgun means in English Shotgun , one often intends to say that their name, which was already of use in 1903 but which was spread especially as from the beginning of the Années 1940, would express in a picturesque way this architectural specificity: thus, being given the provision in row of the parts and the doors, if one drew a Shot (with a shotgun ) in the main door, the ball would cross of a draft this door and the house, to arise by the door of behind. However, this explanation is probably more picturesque than really founded and some advance that the term “shotgun” could more probably correspond to the semantic adaptation of a African term anglicized, the word “togun” meaning “house” in Yoruba, nigéro-Congolese language, and thus, consequently, in the field of architecture, to reflect a African heritage.

There exist several alternatives of shotgun houses, some of them having specific characteristics in terms of space and functionalities. Who more is, good number of shotgun houses were the subject of work to the wire of the generations of their occupants, for being adapted to their waitings and their needs. Oldest obviously were built without installation of interior plumbing: in such a case, the drains were generally added later on, sometimes of bric and pitcher. The shotgun houses of the “Double-barrel” type ( double gun ) are composed of two joint houses, this provision making it possible to put more houses on a given surface. The shotgun houses of the type “Camelback” ( back of camel ) are characterized by the presence of a stage to the back of the house. It also arrives, within the framework of restorations, whether the architecture of the parts is entirely modified to allow the incorporation of corridors or halls.

References