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A "shotgun house" is a narrow rectangular domestic residence, usually no more than about 12 feet (3.5 m) wide, with rooms arranged one behind the other and doors at each end of the house. It was the most popular style of house in the Southern United States from the end of the American Civil War (1861–65) through the 1920s. Alternate names include "shotgun shack", "shotgun hut", "shotgun cottage", and in the case of a multihome dwelling, "shotgun apartment"; the design is similar to that of railroad apartments.
A longstanding theory is that the style can be traced from Africa to Haitian influences on house design in New Orleans,[1] but the houses can be found as far away as Chicago, Key West, Florida, Ybor City, Tampa, and Texas. 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.
Shotgun house:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shotgun_house
Railroad apartment:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_apartment
Popular and Southern culture
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shotgun_house
The shotgun house in Tupelo, Mississippi in which Elvis Presley was born
The shotgun house plays a large role in the folklore and culture of the south. Superstition holds that ghosts and spirits 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.
People born in a shotgun house (please add to the list)
- John Lewis, US Congress
- Elvis Presley
- Aaron Neville of The Neville Brothers grew up in one
- according to bluesman David Honeyboy Edwards, Robert Johnson died in one.
One of the more widely known references to a shotgun house is in the 1980 Talking Heads song "Once In A Lifetime". The first line of the song is
"And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack".[28]