Stuff You Should Know - What is a shotgun house?

Episode Date: May 10, 2012

Shotgun houses are iconic pieces of American architecture: they're long, narrow, and filled with artistic flourishes. But where did they come from? In this episode, Chuck and Josh explore the mysterious origins of shotgun houses. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant with me as always, which makes this stuff you should know. The stuff you should know. Yeah, that's our theme song. Nice job. Thank you.

How you doing? I'm doing great. I feel like we just did this. I'm looking forward to this show. Are you? Yeah, because it touches on parts of Atlanta and its history, which I always love. Sure. And that's a Atlanta man all over the states. All over the states. Chuck, as the immortal David Byrne put it, you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack. You may find yourself in another part of the world. I think even David Byrne didn't realize what he was saying when he put those two lines together. I think he meant them to contrast with one another. Yeah. But really, if you find yourself in a shotgun shack and say the beginning of the 19th century, you probably were experiencing both.

Yeah. Yeah. But he didn't tip, so. No, he doesn't. Here's what he said. That's crazy. So, Chuck, you remember Hurricane Katrina? Sure. I killed, I believe, 1800 people. That is a lot of people. And one of the things, in addition to all the loss of life and property, it was a real worry about loss of a very specific type of architecture, the shotgun house. And the reason, even though you can find it everywhere, from Key West to Chicago to San Francisco, all over the place, you can find shotgun houses, Atlanta. The reason why people were worried about losing it in New Orleans is because, as far as the United States goes, that is where it was born. That's right. And the whole reason anybody would even worry about a

shotgun house, if you've ever seen one, you might think, why would anyone care about losing old shotgun houses, is because they are routinely cited as the great, possibly greatest contribution by African-Americans to American-specific architecture and design. And not only that, responsible for the bringing together, in many ways, of the African-American communities. Yeah. Due to their things that we're going to talk about. I was going to ruin it. Thank you for saving it. That was good, man. Okay. You've surely seen a shotgun house. Yeah, let's talk about some of the features. I think we should, yeah, because there's probably plenty of people out there and people who have seen them and don't know what we're talking about,

you're about to go, oh, if you haven't seen them, then go on to howstuffworks.com and type in, what's a shotgun house and you will find some images of shotgun houses in this article that I wrote. That's true. You wrote this? Years and years ago. I don't think I knew that. Yeah. Nice job. A shotgun house is long and narrow. Yeah. A lot of times they won't have windows on the side of the house. Although in researching this, I saw plenty that do. I did too. That's almost like a throwaway. Sometimes they don't. Yes. And the reason why is because they're often really close together. Sure. Like, I mean, like a foot. Yeah. A couple of feet, you can maybe walk without turning between two houses. Yeah. But that's it. Exactly. Well, you just said they were close to

one another. They have high ceilings. Very few of them had indoor plumbing at first. Yeah. That was usually brought on later and tacked onto the rear of the house, sometimes crudely. Typically, what you have is living room, bedroom, bedroom, kitchen, all in a row, all in a straight line, all the doors lining up, interior doors lining up. Right. So when the front and back doors open, you can see clear through the house, which is one of the reasons why a lot of people think it got its name. You could shoot a gun or shotgun through the front door and it would exit out the back door without hitting a single wall. And it would hit the house behind it. Right. Or some poor sap who's coming in. And like you point out, Josh, it's a cute story and it's all over the place.

I bet you there are many, many tours of New Orleans that say that story is true. May or may not be. It probably isn't. Yeah. What else is specific about shotgun houses, Chuck? They, aside from being modest homes, they have certain architectural flourishes that make them distinctive. I think the idea was kind of like, you know, we may be poor and not have the biggest house, but we can certainly adorn the, the vent, venting grates. Right. And what the, the arbor that held up the, not the arbors. Brackets. Brackets that held up the roof. Uh-huh. They would be intricately carved, usually in a gingerbread design, which a lot of people kind of criticized or poo pooed that addition as poor blacks or even before that

slaves just trying to emulate whites. Um, which is not the case because if you trace, so the shotgun house finds its origins in the US and New Orleans. That's right. But if you go even further back, you'll find older ones on Haiti. And then even further back, you will find something that looks starting startlingly similar. Um, in West Africa and in the Yoruba tongue, the, these houses are called Togan, which means house in Yoruba or shogun, which means God's house. So probably that's where the name comes from, by the way, is Togan or shogun from the Yoruba dialect. Right. Which I love. Um, but in these houses, they also had like intricate details, but they were more of an African motif over time here in the United States. They adopted gingerbread or, um, Victorian.

Yeah. Yeah. Different kinds of carvings, but it is very cool. It's kind of like, this is a very modest, straightforward house, but there's also pretty neat little details. Right. We can still have like great pride in it. Exactly. Um, they were usually New Orleans. They were typically a few feet off the ground, uh, because of the obvious flooding problems there. Yeah. Um, and this I found, and it seems believable to me, but I didn't have time to triple check it. Um, at the time, property taxes were based on frontage. Still are, man. Are they in New Orleans? If you have a house, you're paying by the, um, the frontage, which is the width of your house. Yes. And if you are looking at a shotgun house is very narrow, but it's long. Right. Um, and the number of rooms.

Okay. Yeah. And in New Orleans, I thought they changed it to the number of rooms. They added that on. Yeah, it's both. Okay. Uh, and in New Orleans, uh, rooms include hallways and closets, and you're not going to find a hallway or closet in a shotgun house. So it's also another way to, I guess, keep your property taxes low as well. Well, and I found that they originally it was just frontage. And then so they started building the camelbacks, which is a shotgun house with a second story on the rear of the house only. And then that's when the city said, Oh, well, we should tack rooms onto this as well, because the smart people have found a way around paying as much, you know, property tax. Right. Pretty smart. Yeah, it does. It makes sense. And I also

found that the first mention in print, calling them shotgun houses was in our very own Atlanta Journal Constitution. Is that right? In 1903, a classified ad may have been the first time that it was actually named that in print. And it was like shotgun house, $12 a month rent. Yeah. 12 bucks. That's not too bad. But you could get a shotgun house about that time, a kit for a hundred bucks. Yeah. Um, they also allowed for good airflow too, I want to mention. Yeah. Because you can open up the front and back doors and you got a straight shot. Well, that's one of the reasons why they were adopted in Haiti. Not everybody in Haiti was from West Africa, but that became the predominant style, this West African design house, because it fit in really well with the tropics.

Sure. And New Orleans. Right. So, well, it made its way from Haiti to New Orleans because of the, well, indirectly because of the French Revolution, right? So French Revolution takes place. And you've got liberty, equality, fraternity to all people. That put French planners in Haiti in kind of a pickle because they couldn't grant liberty to their slaves because they wouldn't have any profits any longer. Right. So as they're figuring this out, they're trying to figure out what to do. A guy named Toussaint Louverture makes the decision for him and leads a slave uprising that lasts for many years and basically drives all of the white plantation owners from the island of Haiti. One of the places that they went and then Haiti became the first recognized sovereign maroon

nation of freed slaves, revolting slaves, which is pretty cool. But that also led to, if you go back and listen to our Voodoo podcast, a deep and abiding suspicion by whites of Haiti, all things Haiti from that point on. But so that this slave uprising that led to the freeing of Haiti also led to the white populating of New Orleans. So about that time, if you went to New Orleans, there were about 12,000 people and a third of them were slaves. A third of them were white and then a third of them were free blacks. So this real melting pot and one of the things that came about from that was people fleeing Haiti, bringing the shotgun houses with them. Right. And then it just kind of, it was always African American and it was always associated

with African Americans and it just kind of spread from there to where if you came across a working class African American neighborhood like in Chicago or something like that, you're going to see shotgun houses. Right. Or Atlanta, like I've mentioned many times. If you are local, then you can see these kinds of houses in like the sweet Auburn district, Cabbage Town. And I think Cabbage Town, they were houses for factory workers for the nearby cotton mill often factories. Yeah, it changed hands. Also, you're going to find them directly across the street from Martin Luther King's birthplace. That's right. In the King Memorial area, the whole park is, there's still people that live in them. Oh yeah. And they've been pretty well preserved over the

years. Yeah, it's very cool. But those were like late 19th century built. But it did kind of transition from African American only to working class of all colors. The shotgun house became kind of an emblem of the working class as much as African American. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take America's public enemy. Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that will piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts

as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. How's that New Year's resolution coming along? You know, the one you made about paying off your pesky credit card debt and finally starting to save a retirement. Well, you're not alone if you haven't made progress yet. Roughly four in five New Year's resolutions fail within the first month or two. But that doesn't have to be the case for you and your goals. Our podcast, How to Money can help. That's right. We're two best

buds who've been at it for more than five years now. And we want to see you achieve your money goals. And it's our goal to provide the information and encouragement you need to do it. We keep the show fresh by answering list of questions, interviewing experts and focusing on the relevant financial news that you need to know about. Our show is chock full of the personal finance knowledge that you need with guidance three times a week. And we talk about debt payoff. If let's say you've had a particularly spendthrift holiday season, we also talk about building up your savings, intelligent investing and growing your income. No matter where you are on your financial journey, How to Money has got your back. Millions of listeners have trusted us to help them

achieve their financial goals. Ensure that your resolution turns into ongoing progress. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadioApp, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Now is a row house the same thing or is a row house just? No, those are side by side, like touching sometimes all forming one large building, but then maybe different gables differentiating them. So a shotgun house could be a row house, but a row house can't be a shotgun house. Because then row house indicate like the proximity to one another more than the style of the house or does it? No, I think it's both. And then the shotgun house is not supposed to be confused

with the railroad house either, which is you enter and there's a long hallway from front to back and off of the hallway are rooms. My friend Meredith in Brooklyn lives in a railroad department, which was always a little weird because in order for like when I would stay there, I would stay in the living room and when someone had to go to the bathroom, they would have to walk through the living room to get to the bathroom. It's always awkward. Or she could go outside through the hallway and then come back in because she had two doors to her apartment. Gotcha. It still does. Hi Meredith. So Chuck, we were talking about where else they spread. There's also a lot of them in Oklahoma, especially southern Oklahoma. Oh really? Yeah.

And one of the reasons why is because southern Oklahoma, the Oklahoma territory before it became a state was a free black area. And a lot of blacks traveled to Oklahoma to move to Oklahoma to be free. And a lot of runaway slaves, maroons is what they were called, formed and integrated with Native American tribes like the Seminoles. And when these five civilized tribes and making air quotes like furiously were moved to the Oklahoma territory, a lot of blacks went with them and shotgun houses showed up alongside the whole thing. Awesome. And there's like all black towns or formerly all black towns in southern Oklahoma where it's like shotgun houses everywhere. Wow. Yeah. So Chuck, if you ask me, I feel like now we've reached the point where this is the fact of

the show. And I know you're excited about this one. Well, it's cool. It's one of the reasons I talked about why the cultural legacy of the shotgun home had a lot to do with bringing together the African American community is because of a little something called the front porch. Yeah, they didn't exist in the United States before the shotgun house brought along. So shotgun houses are typically, I mean, a lot of them actually were so far forward that they were on the sidewalk. Yeah. But the ones that weren't had a few feet of grass and then a front porch to hang out on. And in a small house, you're going to congregate on the front porch. And in the evenings, if your neighbors on our front porch five feet from you and they're five feet from another one, then what you have

is a big old friendly cultural block party going on every evening. And the porch is made. It's a spandrel, I guess, of the overhanging roof. And then if you add the fact that in New Orleans, like you said, they were built off of the ground some, you have to build steps to go up to it. And then you have just by you have a de facto porch and then you add a bunch of them together. And there you go. So we don't have porch. So like these huge wraparound porches on old like plantation mansions, stoops in New York, like all of this stuff can be traced back to the shotgun house. Really? Yeah. That's crazy. And thank you for that shotgun house builders. So because one of my favorite things is the front porch or the back porch. Good, good porches. It's very important.

Yeah. You know, shotgun houses started to wane in the 20s. Yeah. And it wasn't it wasn't until fairly recently that we knew the history of shotgun houses that architects went back and art historians went back and figured out where this all came from and traced it step by step. I mean, it was within the last like couple of decades. Wow. And they were like, okay, we found some shotgun houses and these are really old and they date them. And they'd be like, okay, New Orleans is the birthplace. And then somebody'd be like, you know, have you been to Port-au-Prince? Like they got some of their really, really old there and then they traced them back and then somebody figured out that they were from West Africa. But the new construction in the United States

waned in the 20s. And like I said, about the turn of the last century, you could get a kit for about 100 bucks, which also made them really good cheap housing for labor. Yeah. If you had like a work camp, you probably have a shotgun house, cabbage down. Yeah, exactly. And they were also really good for disaster relief. Specifically, they made a big appearance in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Well, yeah, they needed to put up displaced people. And when you can build a house for 100 bucks, then you do so. Exactly. And when it can be prefabricated and then taken apart in like six large parts, put on a train and send somewhere and then put back together within like a couple hours. It's like a waffle house. Yeah, it's exactly like a waffle house. As a matter of fact, I think

you can go on a limb and say, we wouldn't have the waffle house without the shotgun house. You're right. Little pop culture. Yeah, you already mentioned David Byrne. Yeah. Cougs, John Mellencamp, my boy Cougs, pink houses was about a shotgun house. Apparently his legend has it. He was driving on a busy main road and he saw this old black guy sitting on the front porch of his little pink shotgun house, gave him a gave him a wave and he said he just looked like he was as happy as could be sitting out on his porch. Nice. And wrote a song about it. That's nice. And the album that it was on too. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, great song. Elvis Presley was born in the shotgun house. Oh, yeah. In Tupelo. Yeah, Mississippi, which is where I have family actually. And Aaron Neville grew up

in a shotgun house. The incomparable and muscly man, that guy's and Mollie. Yeah. Mollie, Mollie, Mollie. But boy, man, that guy can sing. Yeah. Like a bird. Pretty good Aaron Neville. Yes, me. Shocking houses are making a resurgence too, by the way. Are they building them again? Yes, there's this thing called the tiny house movement. Oh, yeah, that and the whole idea of living modestly in a house you can afford that grants a very small carbon footprint. Yeah. Shocking houses fit that bill. I like the tiny house thing. I think, I think actually Emily might have written an article about that. Is that right? If I'm not mistaken, or maybe it was me. Somebody did. Somebody in our family did. So I remember it. I remember it happening. Was it Buckley? A few years ago,

he had Buckley wrote it. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would

call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. How's that New Year's resolution coming along? You know, the one you made about paying off your pesky credit card debt and finally starting to save a retirement. Well, you're not alone if you haven't made progress yet. Roughly four in five New Year's resolutions fail within the first month or two. But that doesn't have to be the case for you and your goals. Our podcast, How to Money can help. That's right. We're two best buds who've been at it for more than five years now. And we want to see you achieve your money goals. And it's our goal to provide the information and encouragement

you need to do it. We keep the show fresh by answering list of questions, interviewing experts, and focusing on the relevant financial news that you need to know about. Our show is chock full of the personal finance knowledge that you need with guidance three times a week. And we talk about debt payoff. If let's say you've had a particularly spend thrift holiday season, we also talk about building up your savings, intelligent investing and growing your income. No matter where you are on your financial journey, How to Money's got your back. Millions of listeners have trusted us to help them achieve their financial goals. Ensure that your resolution turns into ongoing progress. Listen to How to Money on the iHeart radio app,

Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. You got anything else? No. Go seek out local historic landmarks that might be easily overlooked when you're angry in traffic. Yeah. And when next time you pass a shotgun house, stop and look at it and you'll see some pretty cool little details to it. Ask them to open the door so you can shoot a gun through it. Don't do that. Man, that was a reversal. I was like, no, don't do it. Chuck just said normally. And if you were ever in Atlanta, Chuck and I always recommend going to the King Memorial Center. Yeah. The place where he's buried, where the eternal flame is in all the surrounding area is like a living museum. Yeah. Preserved houses. Just awesome. One of my favorite parts of Atlanta for sure. So if you want to

learn more about shotgun houses and see pictures of shotgun houses, you can type the words shotgun house, two words into the search bar at housestuffworks.com and that'll bring up his article that I wrote. And I said search bar, which means it's time for listener mail. Josh, I'm going to call this beastie email. Yeah. Hey guys, did you read this one? No. I just listened to the music sampling podcast. We get a lot of good feedback on that by the way. Man, everybody loved that. It was a good call, Chuck. And a lot of people offered up like people that know way more than us offered up a lot of cool insight. Yeah. We kept getting called out for not mentioning girl talk. I've never heard girl talk, so I don't feel bad. Yeah. But everyone,

we know about girl talk. Yeah. Okay. Uh, guys that just listened to the music sampling podcast wanted to say how great it was that you featured the beastie boy so prominently in the show. Thought I'd share a little story of when I met them during your 1987 licensed ill tour in Las Vegas when I was 15. So this girl must be my age because I saw that tour and I was about 15. Wow. All right. They performed in a concert hall on the UNLV campus. So it was easy to get to the area where their tour bus was because I lived in the bleachers. They were inviting every female they saw back to their hotel for a party, including 15 year olds. Geez. Well, they were only like 18, 19, 20 still. Well, I know, but you get to be 40 and you're like, what's the big difference

of five years? 15 and 19. Trust me. I'm just saying it's not like they were like 15, 20 years older. Right. I'm with you. I'm defending their pedophilia. By the time we got there, the party had taken over the ninth floor and had already been shut down. We got to say hi to MCA before being escorted away by security for curfew violation. But I was determined. I skipped school the next day, went back to the hotel, basically casing the joint. I ended up finding MCA who remembered me from the night before. I said, howdy. He said hi. Very nice. Boy, you've been waiting on that one. Yeah. I ended up spending the whole day with the guys chatting, playing arcade games, walking over to a 7-Eleven with a very hungover ad rock and even helping load their bags onto the tour bus.

They were only 19, 20 and 21 at the time. Very unassuming. So they weren't getting much attention. Felt like a little sister tagging along with their super cool older brothers. That is very cool. At one point, MCA offered me a tour of the bus. We got on and he closed the door and said, now we can not do all sorts of things that you're going to tell all your friends we did anyway. He was really hysterical. So he was like, he was still a gentleman. Unfortunately, and he's like a Buddhist now, isn't he? Oh, yeah. Big time. Unfortunately, I had not thought to bring a camera with me. So I have no pics. I did get there. I have no documentation that any of this happened. No, she does. Oh, yeah. I did get their autographs,

but the only paper I had in my jacket was old school Snoopy Valentine's. I brought to give out friends. I still treasure my three Snoopy Valentine's each one with their autographs and she sent pictures of them. That's cool. I stayed until they left around six at night. I naively asked MCA if he would write to me. He answered with an honest no and gave me a very sweet kiss on the cheek. I loved it that they have continued to rise in popularity and are given the respect of being true innovators in the field. First here is Ali Smith and she got kissed on the cheek by a very sweet sounding MCA. And all you 15 year olds out there, you better be at home sleeping. Yeah, don't be hanging out with 21 year old dudes, especially not the girl talk people.

Those guys are girls. I think girl talks a guy. Steer clear of that girl talk dude. Yeah. Let's see. What do you want to call out for? Do you live in a shotgun house? No. I guess, yeah, if you have like a house with an interesting history, we did that one. Yeah, but let's do it again. If you live in a house with an interesting history or you've hung out with the Beastie Boys, we want to hear those. You can write to us at, let's see, you can tweet to us at SYSK podcast that's our handle. Facebook.com slash stuff you should know is us on Facebook. And you can send us an email at stuffpodcast at discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you?

The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Hey family, it's your boy Michael Cal. You're the funniest man on the planet. I'm excited to announce my new podcast, Michael talks to everybody. Don't get it twisted. It's

not everybody. We'll be interviewing some of the greatest artists in the game from actors, musicians, and comedians discussing some of the best topics. But most importantly, we're gonna be doing a lot of laughing, having a lot of fun and talking that talk. Listen to Michael talks to everybody on Monday, Wednesday, Friday on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.