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THE SHOTGUN HOUSE

The shotgun house of the South is widely recognized as a significant form of African American vernacular architecture.  Many shotgun houses can be found within the Emerson Park community of East St. Louis.  The shotgun house, therefore, is an important part the Emerson Park resident's culture.

Typical shotgun house of the Emerson Park neighborhood, East St. Louis.

It was not until after the Haitian Slave Rebellion against the French in the early 20th century that the shotgun house was introduced to the United States.  Many historians site that the narrow, one-room units of the Yoruba compound in West Africa, where African American slaves were held prior to their transport to the United States, contributed to the evolution of the shotgun house (Mattson, 1992).

The plan of the shotgun house is of single room width and multi-room depth, containing no hallways, with an entrance and exit at either end.  The plan permits excellent cross ventilation along the length of the house, which helps to combat the hot climate of the Southern states (Tucker, 1995).  In sequence, stepping away from the front porch, one first experiences the living room-bedroom, next the separate bedroom, and lastly the kitchen (Mattson, 1992).

The family life style of traditional African American society contributed to the open plan of the shotgun house.  African culture placed a great emphasis on the continuity of the extended family and on the worship of one’s ancestors.  The daily lifestyles of these African American families were so intertwined that there was no need for the separation of self, family, and community.

These houses received the name ‘shotgun’ due to the fact that if a bullet were to be shot through the front door, it could travel the entire length of the house and leave through the back door without coming in contact with any interior walls.

In the early 1900’s the shotgun house was seen as a symbol of freedom for those African Americans who had been, at the time, recently freed from slavery.  A group of shotgun houses tended to produce “a sense of collective identity” with their indistinguishable, similar facades and front yard porches contributing to a neighborhood gathering space (Tucker, 1995).

While some might argue that shotgun houses portray an image of “neo-slave cabins” and were “sad throwbacks to an era of legal and social inferiority” (Wilson (N.C.) Daily Times 1987), others argue that shotgun houses were a critical aspect of the urban black experience in the South (Mattson, 1992).

The shotgun house is seen by many as a “significant African contribution to the American built landscape, an expression of African culture carried on in the face of extraordinary strife” (Nepomechie, 1997).

REFLECTING ON SHOTGUN HOUSES IN TODAY’S SOCIETY

A competition was held in May 1992 for the design of affordable housing to be built in Mount Olive, a predominately African American community, jointly hosted by the city of Delray Beach, Florida and its Community Redevelopment Agency.

One entry produced by architect Marilys R. Nepomechie was a plan based on the shotgun house of the South.  This proposal was not met with much enthusiasm from future African American residents of Mount Olive.  The soon to be residents explained that this style of house “could only serve to stigmatize and marginalize them [the African Americans] further.”  Rather, these residents favored white, middle-class housing of the 1960’s (Nepomechie, 1997).

Many shotgun houses still stand in the south and are models for affordable living, but according the African American population of Mount Olive, what has been built is in the past and they would prefer to keep it that way.

EARLY NEIGHBORHOOD SETTLEMENT AND HOUSING TYPES
One African American community’s story

The segregated African American population of Wilson made a home for themselves to the east of the railroad
tracks in Wilson, North Carolina (Mattson, 1992, pg. 144).

The information pertaining to the community of Wilson, North Carolina is believed to be typical of most African American urban communities in the South during the late 1800’s into the 1900’s.

In the early 1900’s, African American housing in the South was interspersed with working class white housing as well as being located in the city’s outskirts near the railroads and factories.  As time progressed, this dispersed African American population converged into predominately African American neighborhoods.  Some of the residents were “pushed” into these areas by racist Jim Crow Laws while others were “pulled” in by fostering institutions that held the community together.

In the town of Wilson, the concentration of African American housing was located on the East side of the railroad tracks while the Caucasian neighborhoods were growing to the West, as can be seen in the map below.  Hence the name East Wilson.

Map of East Wilson from 1908 depicting key elements of the landscape (Mattson, 1992, pg. 147).

Prior to the introduction of the shotgun house, the typical house type in East Wilson was that of a traditional southern form, a duplex termed a ‘saddlebag house.’  These homes were sheltered by a gable roof and could be recognized by two front doors, each of which lead into one of two rooms, either by a center chimney or by a rear shed roofed kitchen.

As the population of East Wilson expanded, housing developers chose to build the shotgun house, for simplicity reasons.  The typical dimensions of a shotgun house in East Wilson was 15 feet wide by 45 feet deep.  These houses were built side by side lining the narrow streets of East Wilson.  The shotgun house was an improvement over the ‘saddlebag duplex’, offering a sense of privacy that the ‘saddlebag duplex’ could not.

                                                    The narrow streets of East Wilson are characterized with rows of shotgun houses (Mattson, 1992, pgs. 150, 153).
 

The shotgun houses in East Wilson altered in appearance as architectural styles of the time transformed.  The earliest form combined simple Victorian and Classical elements such as heavily molded gable returns with chamfered porch posts as can be seen in the image below.  In the 1920’s shotgun houses were fashioned after bungalows with exposed rafters, wooden shingles, and recessed porches.  By the late 1920’s a “double-shotgun” duplex was on the housing market.

Shotgun housing that combined simple Victorian and Classical elements                        In the 1920's, shotgun houses assumed bungalow features, and double shotguns
(Mattson, 1992, pg. 151).                                                                                       began to appear (Mattson, 1992, pg. 152).

As the working-class population of East Wilson grew and matured, so did its housing.  Developers introduced single family, four-room square cottages that offered a larger scale living space than that of the shotgun (Mattson, 1992).  Even though the shotgun house remains a significant part of African American culture, present design should encompass the values and needs of current clients as well as evolving architectural trends.

For more information concerning the evolution and symbolism of the shotgun house refer to:
http://www.artsednet.getty.edu/ArtsEdNet/Resources/Biggers/Shotgun/haiti.html

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