Here is a old house; may have been built as far back as the 1800's; that has been renovated and is for sale.
You can find these type houses all over the south.
So what do they call these houses in your area??


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Around here we call these shotgun houses.
The house is no more than 12 feet wide; has no hallway; with rooms right behind one another.
It is said you could shoot a gun in the front door straight out the back and never hit one wall as all the doors are on one side of the house.
These houses are often associated with poor blacks today but in years past they were more than that.
You can even find this type house in some upscale older neighborhoods.
My mother was born and raised in a house just like this.

I look at a house like this and contemplate how far we have come over the years.
The things we consider as "must have" to get threw life that are really "would like to have".
 
They're called shotgun houses in east texas too. Around here they were built that way because they were used in temporary logging camps/ towns. They would move them in on railcars, use the steam log crane and set them up along the track at the new site. When that site was logged out they would reload and move the tracks and buildings further along. That kind of thing went on around here from 1880's until the 1950's.
 
Very few small homes like that left in these parts, as the lot the house sits on is worth more than the building . So they are bought , smashed down , and a new home will be built. You are correct that most folks don't need as big a home as the have , wants and needs are two very different things. small home like that would be ideal for a older couple,easy to heat and look after.
 
Kinda cool to not see something like that but to get explanations that you guys have posted.

The ability to move them and the fact that some were designed to be moved as needed shows how innovative man can be when the need arises.

I kinda laugh about it but when my wife and I were young we dreamed of a large house. Now in our very early 60's we thing smaller is better, less to heat and cool, less to keep clean and maintain and less taxes!

Rick
 
I'm not sure if I've ever heard of anything other than "shotgun shack" - Talking Heads "Once in a lifetime"

I lived in a 3 room house of similar configuration, in Hopelawn NJ, have photos of it, but for some reason, cannot find them in my directory.

3 rooms - front door to living room, doorway on left, bedroom, doorway on left, kitchen with bathroom off to one side, back door and cellar stairs, doorways were all aligned and the lot this house was on was bigger than any in the neighborhood, but it was the smallest house in the neighborhood.
 
I was thinking Bungalows but see that they are even smaller. Sears and Roebuck used to sell house "KITS". Came to your local railroad siding in a box car. Everything in numbered boxes and the wood was all numbered too. There were a couple of them in Flemington on route 31 and the idiots didn't know what they were and just crushed them. Then everyone was howling about how they should have been saved! Thomas Edison used to have a "loaner" kit of forms so you could build your own house out of poured concrete! Rent the forms and pour your house and then send the forms back. Almost every idea has been tried since the cave days.
 
Yeah Shotgun house. My grandparents in Enterprise Al. had one that was, as I called it as I got older, a "double barrel". Three rooms down one side, front room with fire place, their bedroom, and large kitchen area with coal stove for heat. There were Grandpa, grandma and their 9 children. All gone now my mother was the last at 92 this time last year. Second three room section was staggered and attached via an open 8 foot wide breeze way, those were all bed rooms, center bedroom had fire place. Large front porch, facing the west, with a swing and three or four rocking chairs, rear porch was facing east and had a wash up place where we could get cleaned up for dinner. All this was under one shake roof. The two front rooms were built around a log framed house house which was built in late 1800's. All gone now, shake roof started to give in and it became a bit dangerous. Uncle who built next door tore it down but saved the log house inside and it was rebuilt by decendants of the origional builders in the 1980's I believe. Wow what stories this old place held. Thanks for giving me a few moments to reflect. J
 
When I see that I see a simple house built to serve a need. Nothing wrong with that. I think it is called living within your means. As a country we could use more of that concept. You can live simple and cheap and still take pride in your house.
 
All I ever heard of called row houses were in bigger cities and built with a common wall on each side of them for the complete distance from one cross street to the next and were usually 2 or 3 stories high and if you were luckey to have a backyard to get to it from the street you had to go in the front door and through the house and go out the back door. Most the common wall was brick for fire protection.
 
We did not have that type here because we did not need the ability for the wind to go straight through from one end to the other for cooling. Around here were built more in a square to make them easier to heat in winter.
 
my grandparents lived in a shot gun house like that in the late fifties . it was about 3 blocks from quaker oats co. in st joseph mo. i remember the porch swing in front and a pot belly wood stove in the middle room .
 
Hi gajack. I believe that your grandparents house would have been called a "dog trot" house, with the "busy section" of the house on the left and "the sleeping quarters" on the right of the open breezeway. This design kept the sleeping quarters away from the kitchen and the "heat" and the open "breezeway" helped to cool the sleeping quarters. Anyone who has ever slept in a house without air conditioning in the summertime in the south will appreciate the design of this house.

The simple shotgun house was called a "shotgun" house because in trade it was worth the cost of an inexpensive double barrel shotgun.

Scott
 
Glad you're doing OK. I was raised in the Houston area and South toward the Gulf. I know what it's like to not have anywhere for the water to go. Every spring it was the same story.
 

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