Shotgun: The Most Contested House in America

"Known by a variety of names in Louisiana, the shotgun house was first formally named by Fred B. Kniffen in his 1936 article on Louisiana house types. Since the pioneering work of John Michael Vlach in the 1970s, the shotgun house in New Orleans has functioned as a bellwether of political commitment to entire subcultures, including their associated social and racial predispositions. Theories of the origins of the shotgun lie deeply enmeshed in larger cultural debates on race and authority in the city. Some see the shotgun as a response to constrained urban lots while others see the building type inextricably linked to the city’s substantial nineteenth-century African American population. These biases lay relatively submerged and unstated, but with the receding flood waters of Hurricane Katrina, when roughly 40 percent of the city’s housing stock was severely damaged or destroyed, the competition between groups and classes for scarce resources and limited funding has brought these contests to the fore (Figure 1). In New Orleans, it seems everyone has a well-defined idea about what should be preserved and what should be bulldozed. Irreconcilable theories of the origins and value of the shotgun house go to the very heart of the question of what is to be saved. Entire sections of the city are at stake."

Edwards, Jay D. "Shotgun: The Most Contested House in America." Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum Vol 16, No 1 (Spring 2009): 62-96.