August 10, 2019 • 24 mins
Shotgun houses are iconic pieces of American architecture: they're long, narrow, and filled with artistic flourishes. But where did they come from? Join Chuck and Josh and explore the mysterious origins of shotgun houses.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everybody. It's May tenth, two twelve. What No, that
just means it's me Chuck picking out a select episode
from May tenth, two thousand twelve. What's a Shotgun House?
It's cool because I like houses. Welcome to Stuff You
Should Know, a production of Five Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
(00:28):
Welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant with me as always, UM, which makes this
stuff you should know? The stuff you should Yeah, that's
our themes on it. Nice time, Thank you. Um. How
are you doing. I'm doing great. I feel like we
(00:48):
just did this. I'm looking forward to the show, are you? Yeah?
Because it touches on parts of Atlanta in their in
its history, which I always loved. And that's as Atlanta
man all over the States, all over the States. As uh,
the immortal David Byrne put it, you may find yourself
living in a shotgun check, you may find yourself in
(01:10):
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. But really, if you found yourself in
a shotgun check and say the beginning of the nineteenth century,
(01:31):
you probably were experiencing both. Yeah. Yeah, but he doesn't
tip so now he doesn't care what he said. That's crazy. Um,
So Chuck, you remember her, Kane, Katrina Um I killed
I believe people. There is a lot of people. Um.
(01:51):
And one of the things in addition to all the
loss of life and property was a real worry about
loss of very um 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. UM. The
(02:13):
reason why people were worried about losing it in New
Orleans 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 chotgun houses is because they are
routinely cited as the great, possibly greatest contribution by African
(02:39):
Americans to American specific architecture and design, and not only that,
responsible for the bringing together in many ways of the
African American communities due to their things that we're going
to talk about. I was going to ruin it. I'm
thank you for saving it. That was good man. Okay, Um,
(03:01):
you've surely seen a shotgun house. Yeah, let's talk about
to some of the features people. We should. Yeah, because
there's probably plenty of people out there and people who
have seen him and don't know what we're talking about.
You're about to go. Oh, if you haven't seen him,
then go onto how stuff works dot com and type
in what's a shotgun house and you will find some
images of shotgun houses in this article that I wrote.
(03:23):
That's true. You wrote this years and years ago. I
don't think I knew that. Nice job. 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, so it's almost
like a throwaway. Sometimes they do, don't, Yes, And the
reason why it's because they're often really close together, like
(03:44):
I mean, like a foot, a couple of feet. You
can maybe walk without turning between two houses. But that's
it exactly. Um, they well, you just said they were
close to one another. Um, they have high ceilings. They
very few of them had indoor plumbing at first. UM.
That was usually brought on later um and tacked onto
(04:07):
the rear of the house, sometimes crudely. Uh. Typically what
you have is a 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 door is open, you can see
clear through the house, which is one of the reasons
why a lot of people think it got its name.
(04:28):
You could shoot a gun or a shotgun through the
front door and it would exit out the back door
without hitting a single wall, and that would hit the
house behind it or some poor staff who's coming in
and like you point out, Josh, it's a cute story,
and it's all over the place. A bet you there
are many many tours of New Orleans. I'd say that
story is true. May or may not be. It probably isn't. Um.
(04:53):
What else is? What else is specific about shotgun houses, chuck? Uh?
They aside from being a mada homes, they have certain
architectural flourishes that make them distinctive. UM. I think the
idea was kind of like, you know, we may be
poor and not have the biggest house, but we can
(05:14):
certainly adorn the the vent venting greats and what the
the arbor that held up the not the arbor brackets,
brackets that held up the roof. They would be intricately carved,
usually in a gingerbread design, um, which a lot of
people kind of criticize or pooh pooed that addition, um
(05:34):
as h 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, but if you
go even further back, you'll find older ones on Haiti,
and then even further back you will find something that
(05:55):
looks started startlingly similar. Um. In West Africa and in
the Yoruba tongue, these houses are called to gun, which
means house in Yoruba, or showgun, which means God's house.
So probably that's where the name comes from. By the ways,
to gun or showgun from the Yoruba dialect, right, which
I love. UM. But in these houses they also had
(06:18):
like intricate details, but they were more of an African motif.
Over time here in the United States, they adopted gingerbreadin
or Um Victorian. 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 we can still have like great pride in it exactly. Um,
(06:41):
they were usually in New Orleans. They were typically a
few feed off the ground because of the obvious flooding
problems there. 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 aren't in are they in New Orleans?
(07:02):
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. Um. And the number of
rooms okay, and in New Orleans though they changed it
to the number of rooms, they added that on. Yeah,
it's both okay, uh. And in New Orleans rooms include
(07:25):
hallways and closets, and you're not going to find a
hallway or a closet in a shotgun house. So it's
also another way to um, 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
(07:47):
then that's when the city said, oh, well we should
tack rooms onto this as well, because these smart people
have found a way around paying, as you know, property
tax pretty smart. Yeah, it does, it makes it makes sense.
And also found that the first mentioned in print calling
them shotgun houses was in our very own Atlanta Journal
Constitution in nine three a classified ad may have been
(08:10):
the first time that it was actually named that in print,
and it was like shotgun house twelve dollars a month rent. Yeah,
twelve bucks. That's not too bad. But you could get
a shotgun house about that time a kit for a
hundred bucks um. They also allowed for good air flow too,
I want to mention, yeah, because you can open up
the front and back doors and you got a straight shot. Well,
(08:31):
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, all right.
So well, it made its way from Haiti to New
Orleans because of the well in indirectly because of the
(08:52):
French Revolution. Right, So French Revolution takes place and you've
got UM, liberty, gality, 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
(09:12):
have any profits any longer. So as they're figuring this out,
they're trying to figure out what to do, a guy
named Toussaint low Mature 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 UM recognized sovereign maroon
(09:37):
nation of freed slaves revolting slaves UM, 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 UM. But so that this slave uprising that led
(09:58):
to the UM 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 twelve
thousand people and a third of them were slaves, the
third of them were white, and then a third of
them were free blacks. So it's it's real melting pot
um And one of the place one of the things
(10:18):
that came about from that was people fleeing Haiti bringing
the shotgun houses with them, and then it just kind
of it was always African American um and it was
always associated with African Americans, and it just kind of
spread from there to where if you if you came
across the working class African American neighborhood like in Chicago
(10:39):
or something like that, you're going to see shotgun of
houses or Atlanta, like I've mentioned many times. Uh, if
if you are local, then you can see these kinds
of houses in like the Sweet Auburn district, Cabbage Down
and I think Cabbage Town where they were houses for
factory workers for the nearby cotton mill offten uh factories. Yeah,
(10:59):
it changed hands um. Also, you're gonna find them directly
across the street from Martin Luther King's birthplace UM in
the King Memorial area. The whole park is UM. There's
still people that live in them. Yeah, and they've been
pretty well preserved over the Yeah. Yeah, it's very cool.
But those were like late nineteenth century built. But it
did kind of transition from African American only to working
(11:22):
class of all colors. The shotgun house became kind of
an emblem of the working class as much as African
Americans now. Is a is a row house the same thing?
Or is a row house? Just know those are side
by side, like touching, sometimes all forming one large building,
but then maybe different gables differentiating them. So a shotgun
(11:45):
a shotgun house could be a row house, but a
row house can't be a shotgun house because den row
house indicate like the proximity to one another more than
the style of the house. Or no, I think it's both.
And then the shotgun house is not supposed to be
confused with the railroad house either, yea, which is you
(12:05):
enter and there's a long hallway from front to back,
and then off of the hallway our rooms apartments. My
friend Meredith in New York, in Brooklyn, lives in a
railroad department which was always a little weird because like
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 you know, living room to tend to get
(12:26):
to the Bathroom's always awkward. Or she could go outside
through the hallway and then come back in because she
had two doors to her apartment. Got it still does, hi, Meredith,
(12:56):
So Chuck, we're talking about where else they spread. There's
UM also a lot of in Oklahoma, especially southern Oklahoma. Yeah.
And one of the reasons why is because southern Oklahoma,
the Oklahoma territory Um before it became a state, was
a free black area and a lot of blacks traveled
to Oklahoma, moved to Oklahoma to be free, and a
(13:17):
lot of runaway slaves maroons is what they are called,
formed and integrated with um Native American tribes like the Seminoles.
And when these five civilized tribes and making air quotes
like furiously um were moved to the Oklahoma territory Um,
a lot of blacks went with them, and shockun houses
(13:39):
showed up alongside the whole thing, and there's like all
black towns are formerly all black towns in southern Oklahoma
where it's like shocking houses everywhere. 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. Well, it's cool. They um.
(14:02):
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 it along. So the shotgun houses are typically I
mean a lot of them actually were so far forward
that they were on the sidewalk, But the ones that
(14:24):
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.
(14:47):
It's a spandrel I guess of the um overhanging roof.
And then if you add the fact that in New Orleans,
like you said, they were built off of the ground.
Some yeah, you have to build steps to go up
to it. And then you have a just buy you
have a de facto porch. And then yeah, you add
a bunch of them together and there you go. So
we didn't have porch. So like these huge wraparound porches
(15:09):
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
(15:31):
wane in the twenties, and it wasn't It wasn't until
fairly recently that we knew the history of shotgun houses.
That architects um went back and 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 a couple of decades um. And they
(15:52):
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 be like,
have you been to Port of Prince Like they got
some they're 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 twenties, and like I said about
(16:14):
the turn of the last century, you could get a
kit for about a hundred bucks, which also made them
really good cheap housing for labor um if you had
like a work camp, you exactly um. And they were
also really good for disaster relief. Specifically, they made a
big appearance in the San Francisco earthquake of nineteen o six. Well, yeah,
(16:37):
they needed to put up displaced people. And when you
can build a house for a hundred bucks, then you
do so exactly. And when it can be pre fabricated
and then taking apart in like six large parts, put
on a train and sent somewhere and then put back
together within like a couple hours, like a waffle house. Yeah,
(16:57):
it's exactly like a waffle house. As matter of fact,
I think you can go out on a limb and
say we wouldn't have the waffle house without the shotgun house.
I think you're right, uh little pop culture. Yeah, you
already mentioned David Byrne. Uh Coogs, John Mellencamp, My boy
Coogs Pink Houses was about a shotgun house. Apparently, his
legend has it, he was driving on a busy main
(17:20):
road and he saw this little black guy sitting on
the front porch of his little pink shotgun house, gave him,
gave him a wave, and he said he just looked
like he was as happy as could be sitting out
on his porch. And uh, I wrote a song about it,
that's nice, and and that the album that I was
on too, Yeah, I think so great song. Elvis Presley
was born in the shotgun house. Oh yeah, in uh yeah, Mississippi,
(17:42):
which is where I have family actually, And Aaron Neville
grew up in a shotgun house. The incomparable and muscly
and Moley. But boy man like I can sing yeah
like a bird? Okay, face pretty good, Aaron Neville ask me,
(18:16):
it's um shock. Gun 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 the house
(18:37):
you can afford that UM grants a very small carbon footprint.
Shotgun 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, because I remember I remember it happening. Was
it Buckley a few years ago? Yeah? Buckley wrote it. Um,
(19:00):
you got anything else, no go, you know, 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, like, stop and look at it, and
you'll see some pretty cool little details to it. Ask
him to open the door so you can shoot a
gun through it. Don't do that. Don't do that. Man,
(19:20):
that was a reversal. I was like, no, don't do it,
Chuck said, Normally it's the other way around. Uh. And
if you're ever in Atlanta, Chuck and I always recommend
going to the King Memorial Center, the place where he's buried,
where the eternal flame is in all the surrounding area.
UM is like a Living Museum Preserved House is just awesome.
(19:40):
One of my favorite parts of Atlanta for sure. Um 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 how
stuff works dot com and that'll bring up this article
that I wrote. And I said search bar, which means
it's time for a listener now, Josh, I'm gonna call
(20:03):
this beast email. Hey, guys, did you did you read
this one? Um? I just listened to the Music Sampling Podcast.
We got a lot of good feedback on that by man,
everybody loved that was and a lot of people offered
up like people don't 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
(20:25):
we know about girl talk. Now, Okay, guys that just
listened to the Music Sampling Podcast wanted to say how
great it was that you featured the Beastie Boys so
prominently in the show. I thought i'd share a little
story when I met them during the nineteen seven licensed
to Ild tour in Las Vegas when I was fifteen.
So this girl must be my age because I saw
that tour and I was about fifteen. Wow. All right.
(20:48):
They performed in a concert hall on the un l
V 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 teen year olds.
Well they were only like eighteen nineteen. Still, Well, I know,
but you get to be forty and you're like, what's
(21:09):
the big difference of five years? Man? That's back then.
I'm just saying, it's not like they were like years older.
All right, I'm defending their pedophilia. Uh. 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 m c A before being escorted away
(21:31):
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 m c A,
who remembered me from the night before. I said, how
do He said, Hi, very nice? What you heard waiting
on that one? I ended up spending the whole day
with the guys, chatting, playing arcade games, walking over to
(21:52):
a seven eleven with a very hungover ad Rock, and
even helping load their bags onto the tour bus. They're
only nineteen twenty and twenty one at the time. I'm
very unassuming, so they weren't getting much attention. I felt
like a little sister tagging along with their super cool
older brothers. That is very cool. At one point m
c a offered me a tour of the bus. We
got on and he closed the door and said, now
(22:14):
we cannot 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 and he oh yeah. Unfortunately.
I had not thought to bring a camera with me,
so I have no picks. I did get the auto
documentation any of this happened, now, she does, um. I
(22:34):
did get their autographs, but the only paper I had
in my jacket was old school snoopy valentines I had
bought to give up friends. I still treasure my three
snoopy valentines 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 m c a
if he would write to me. He answered with an
(22:54):
honest no and gave me a very sweet kiss on
the cheek. I loved it that they have conceid need
to rise in popularity and her given the respect of
being true innovators in the field. First. Sure that is
Ali Smith and she got kissed on the cheek by
a very sweet sounding m c And all of your
fifteen year olds out there, you'd better be at home sleeping. Yeah,
(23:15):
don't be hanging out with twenty one year old dudes,
especially not the girl talk people. Those guys are girls.
I think girl talk to a guy. It's dear clear
that girl talk to um. Let's see what do you
want to call out for? M hmm. 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,
(23:38):
but let's do it again that boy. Um, 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 uh, let's see. You
can tweet to us at s y s K podcast.
That's our handle Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should
Know is us on Facebook, and you can send us
an email to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com.
(24:05):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's
How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. H
Hi, everybody. It's May tenth, two twelve. What No, that
just means it's me Chuck picking out a select episode
from May tenth, two thousand twelve. What's a Shotgun House?
It's cool because I like houses. Welcome to Stuff You
Should Know, a production of Five Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
(00:28):
Welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant with me as always, UM, which makes this
stuff you should know? The stuff you should Yeah, that's
our themes on it. Nice time, Thank you. Um. How
are you doing. I'm doing great. I feel like we
(00:48):
just did this. I'm looking forward to the show, are you? Yeah?
Because it touches on parts of Atlanta in their in
its history, which I always loved. And that's as Atlanta
man all over the States, all over the States. As uh,
the immortal David Byrne put it, you may find yourself
living in a shotgun check, you may find yourself in
(01:10):
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. But really, if you found yourself in
a shotgun check and say the beginning of the nineteenth century,
(01:31):
you probably were experiencing both. Yeah. Yeah, but he doesn't
tip so now he doesn't care what he said. That's crazy. Um,
So Chuck, you remember her, Kane, Katrina Um I killed
I believe people. There is a lot of people. Um.
(01:51):
And one of the things in addition to all the
loss of life and property was a real worry about
loss of very um 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. UM. The
(02:13):
reason why people were worried about losing it in New
Orleans 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 chotgun houses is because they are
routinely cited as the great, possibly greatest contribution by African
(02:39):
Americans to American specific architecture and design, and not only that,
responsible for the bringing together in many ways of the
African American communities due to their things that we're going
to talk about. I was going to ruin it. I'm
thank you for saving it. That was good man. Okay, Um,
(03:01):
you've surely seen a shotgun house. Yeah, let's talk about
to some of the features people. We should. Yeah, because
there's probably plenty of people out there and people who
have seen him and don't know what we're talking about.
You're about to go. Oh, if you haven't seen him,
then go onto how stuff works dot com and type
in what's a shotgun house and you will find some
images of shotgun houses in this article that I wrote.
(03:23):
That's true. You wrote this years and years ago. I
don't think I knew that. Nice job. 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, so it's almost
like a throwaway. Sometimes they do, don't, Yes, And the
reason why it's because they're often really close together, like
(03:44):
I mean, like a foot, a couple of feet. You
can maybe walk without turning between two houses. But that's
it exactly. Um, they well, you just said they were
close to one another. Um, they have high ceilings. They
very few of them had indoor plumbing at first. UM.
That was usually brought on later um and tacked onto
(04:07):
the rear of the house, sometimes crudely. Uh. Typically what
you have is a 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 door is open, you can see
clear through the house, which is one of the reasons
why a lot of people think it got its name.
(04:28):
You could shoot a gun or a shotgun through the
front door and it would exit out the back door
without hitting a single wall, and that would hit the
house behind it or some poor staff who's coming in
and like you point out, Josh, it's a cute story,
and it's all over the place. A bet you there
are many many tours of New Orleans. I'd say that
story is true. May or may not be. It probably isn't. Um.
(04:53):
What else is? What else is specific about shotgun houses, chuck? Uh?
They aside from being a mada homes, they have certain
architectural flourishes that make them distinctive. UM. I think the
idea was kind of like, you know, we may be
poor and not have the biggest house, but we can
(05:14):
certainly adorn the the vent venting greats and what the
the arbor that held up the not the arbor brackets,
brackets that held up the roof. They would be intricately carved,
usually in a gingerbread design, um, which a lot of
people kind of criticize or pooh pooed that addition, um
(05:34):
as h 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, but if you
go even further back, you'll find older ones on Haiti,
and then even further back you will find something that
(05:55):
looks started startlingly similar. Um. In West Africa and in
the Yoruba tongue, these houses are called to gun, which
means house in Yoruba, or showgun, which means God's house.
So probably that's where the name comes from. By the ways,
to gun or showgun from the Yoruba dialect, right, which
I love. UM. But in these houses they also had
(06:18):
like intricate details, but they were more of an African motif.
Over time here in the United States, they adopted gingerbreadin
or Um Victorian. 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 we can still have like great pride in it exactly. Um,
(06:41):
they were usually in New Orleans. They were typically a
few feed off the ground because of the obvious flooding
problems there. 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 aren't in are they in New Orleans?
(07:02):
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. Um. And the number of
rooms okay, and in New Orleans though they changed it
to the number of rooms, they added that on. Yeah,
it's both okay, uh. And in New Orleans rooms include
(07:25):
hallways and closets, and you're not going to find a
hallway or a closet in a shotgun house. So it's
also another way to um, 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
(07:47):
then that's when the city said, oh, well we should
tack rooms onto this as well, because these smart people
have found a way around paying, as you know, property
tax pretty smart. Yeah, it does, it makes it makes sense.
And also found that the first mentioned in print calling
them shotgun houses was in our very own Atlanta Journal
Constitution in nine three a classified ad may have been
(08:10):
the first time that it was actually named that in print,
and it was like shotgun house twelve dollars a month rent. Yeah,
twelve bucks. That's not too bad. But you could get
a shotgun house about that time a kit for a
hundred bucks um. They also allowed for good air flow too,
I want to mention, yeah, because you can open up
the front and back doors and you got a straight shot. Well,
(08:31):
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, all right.
So well, it made its way from Haiti to New
Orleans because of the well in indirectly because of the
(08:52):
French Revolution. Right, So French Revolution takes place and you've
got UM, liberty, gality, 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
(09:12):
have any profits any longer. So as they're figuring this out,
they're trying to figure out what to do, a guy
named Toussaint low Mature 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 UM recognized sovereign maroon
(09:37):
nation of freed slaves revolting slaves UM, 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 UM. But so that this slave uprising that led
(09:58):
to the UM 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 twelve
thousand people and a third of them were slaves, the
third of them were white, and then a third of
them were free blacks. So it's it's real melting pot
um And one of the place one of the things
(10:18):
that came about from that was people fleeing Haiti bringing
the shotgun houses with them, and then it just kind
of it was always African American um and it was
always associated with African Americans, and it just kind of
spread from there to where if you if you came
across the working class African American neighborhood like in Chicago
(10:39):
or something like that, you're going to see shotgun of
houses or Atlanta, like I've mentioned many times. Uh, if
if you are local, then you can see these kinds
of houses in like the Sweet Auburn district, Cabbage Down
and I think Cabbage Town where they were houses for
factory workers for the nearby cotton mill offten uh factories. Yeah,
(10:59):
it changed hands um. Also, you're gonna find them directly
across the street from Martin Luther King's birthplace UM in
the King Memorial area. The whole park is UM. There's
still people that live in them. Yeah, and they've been
pretty well preserved over the Yeah. Yeah, it's very cool.
But those were like late nineteenth century built. But it
did kind of transition from African American only to working
(11:22):
class of all colors. The shotgun house became kind of
an emblem of the working class as much as African
Americans now. Is a is a row house the same thing?
Or is a row house? Just know those are side
by side, like touching, sometimes all forming one large building,
but then maybe different gables differentiating them. So a shotgun
(11:45):
a shotgun house could be a row house, but a
row house can't be a shotgun house because den row
house indicate like the proximity to one another more than
the style of the house. Or no, I think it's both.
And then the shotgun house is not supposed to be
confused with the railroad house either, yea, which is you
(12:05):
enter and there's a long hallway from front to back,
and then off of the hallway our rooms apartments. My
friend Meredith in New York, in Brooklyn, lives in a
railroad department which was always a little weird because like
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 you know, living room to tend to get
(12:26):
to the Bathroom's always awkward. Or she could go outside
through the hallway and then come back in because she
had two doors to her apartment. Got it still does, hi, Meredith,
(12:56):
So Chuck, we're talking about where else they spread. There's
UM also a lot of in Oklahoma, especially southern Oklahoma. Yeah.
And one of the reasons why is because southern Oklahoma,
the Oklahoma territory Um before it became a state, was
a free black area and a lot of blacks traveled
to Oklahoma, moved to Oklahoma to be free, and a
(13:17):
lot of runaway slaves maroons is what they are called,
formed and integrated with um Native American tribes like the Seminoles.
And when these five civilized tribes and making air quotes
like furiously um were moved to the Oklahoma territory Um,
a lot of blacks went with them, and shockun houses
(13:39):
showed up alongside the whole thing, and there's like all
black towns are formerly all black towns in southern Oklahoma
where it's like shocking houses everywhere. 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. Well, it's cool. They um.
(14:02):
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 it along. So the shotgun houses are typically I
mean a lot of them actually were so far forward
that they were on the sidewalk, But the ones that
(14:24):
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.
(14:47):
It's a spandrel I guess of the um overhanging roof.
And then if you add the fact that in New Orleans,
like you said, they were built off of the ground.
Some yeah, you have to build steps to go up
to it. And then you have a just buy you
have a de facto porch. And then yeah, you add
a bunch of them together and there you go. So
we didn't have porch. So like these huge wraparound porches
(15:09):
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
(15:31):
wane in the twenties, and it wasn't It wasn't until
fairly recently that we knew the history of shotgun houses.
That architects um went back and 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 a couple of decades um. And they
(15:52):
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 be like,
have you been to Port of Prince Like they got
some they're 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 twenties, and like I said about
(16:14):
the turn of the last century, you could get a
kit for about a hundred bucks, which also made them
really good cheap housing for labor um if you had
like a work camp, you exactly um. And they were
also really good for disaster relief. Specifically, they made a
big appearance in the San Francisco earthquake of nineteen o six. Well, yeah,
(16:37):
they needed to put up displaced people. And when you
can build a house for a hundred bucks, then you
do so exactly. And when it can be pre fabricated
and then taking apart in like six large parts, put
on a train and sent somewhere and then put back
together within like a couple hours, like a waffle house. Yeah,
(16:57):
it's exactly like a waffle house. As matter of fact,
I think you can go out on a limb and
say we wouldn't have the waffle house without the shotgun house.
I think you're right, uh little pop culture. Yeah, you
already mentioned David Byrne. Uh Coogs, John Mellencamp, My boy
Coogs Pink Houses was about a shotgun house. Apparently, his
legend has it, he was driving on a busy main
(17:20):
road and he saw this little black guy sitting on
the front porch of his little pink shotgun house, gave him,
gave him a wave, and he said he just looked
like he was as happy as could be sitting out
on his porch. And uh, I wrote a song about it,
that's nice, and and that the album that I was
on too, Yeah, I think so great song. Elvis Presley
was born in the shotgun house. Oh yeah, in uh yeah, Mississippi,
(17:42):
which is where I have family actually, And Aaron Neville
grew up in a shotgun house. The incomparable and muscly
and Moley. But boy man like I can sing yeah
like a bird? Okay, face pretty good, Aaron Neville ask me,
(18:16):
it's um shock. Gun 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 the house
(18:37):
you can afford that UM grants a very small carbon footprint.
Shotgun 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, because I remember I remember it happening. Was
it Buckley a few years ago? Yeah? Buckley wrote it. Um,
(19:00):
you got anything else, no go, you know, 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, like, stop and look at it, and
you'll see some pretty cool little details to it. Ask
him to open the door so you can shoot a
gun through it. Don't do that. Don't do that. Man,
(19:20):
that was a reversal. I was like, no, don't do it,
Chuck said, Normally it's the other way around. Uh. And
if you're ever in Atlanta, Chuck and I always recommend
going to the King Memorial Center, the place where he's buried,
where the eternal flame is in all the surrounding area.
UM is like a Living Museum Preserved House is just awesome.
(19:40):
One of my favorite parts of Atlanta for sure. Um 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 how
stuff works dot com and that'll bring up this article
that I wrote. And I said search bar, which means
it's time for a listener now, Josh, I'm gonna call
(20:03):
this beast email. Hey, guys, did you did you read
this one? Um? I just listened to the Music Sampling Podcast.
We got a lot of good feedback on that by man,
everybody loved that was and a lot of people offered
up like people don't 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
(20:25):
we know about girl talk. Now, Okay, guys that just
listened to the Music Sampling Podcast wanted to say how
great it was that you featured the Beastie Boys so
prominently in the show. I thought i'd share a little
story when I met them during the nineteen seven licensed
to Ild tour in Las Vegas when I was fifteen.
So this girl must be my age because I saw
that tour and I was about fifteen. Wow. All right.
(20:48):
They performed in a concert hall on the un l
V 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 teen year olds.
Well they were only like eighteen nineteen. Still, Well, I know,
but you get to be forty and you're like, what's
(21:09):
the big difference of five years? Man? That's back then.
I'm just saying, it's not like they were like years older.
All right, I'm defending their pedophilia. Uh. 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 m c A before being escorted away
(21:31):
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 m c A,
who remembered me from the night before. I said, how
do He said, Hi, very nice? What you heard waiting
on that one? I ended up spending the whole day
with the guys, chatting, playing arcade games, walking over to
(21:52):
a seven eleven with a very hungover ad Rock, and
even helping load their bags onto the tour bus. They're
only nineteen twenty and twenty one at the time. I'm
very unassuming, so they weren't getting much attention. I felt
like a little sister tagging along with their super cool
older brothers. That is very cool. At one point m
c a offered me a tour of the bus. We
got on and he closed the door and said, now
(22:14):
we cannot 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 and he oh yeah. Unfortunately.
I had not thought to bring a camera with me,
so I have no picks. I did get the auto
documentation any of this happened, now, she does, um. I
(22:34):
did get their autographs, but the only paper I had
in my jacket was old school snoopy valentines I had
bought to give up friends. I still treasure my three
snoopy valentines 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 m c a
if he would write to me. He answered with an
(22:54):
honest no and gave me a very sweet kiss on
the cheek. I loved it that they have conceid need
to rise in popularity and her given the respect of
being true innovators in the field. First. Sure that is
Ali Smith and she got kissed on the cheek by
a very sweet sounding m c And all of your
fifteen year olds out there, you'd better be at home sleeping. Yeah,
(23:15):
don't be hanging out with twenty one year old dudes,
especially not the girl talk people. Those guys are girls.
I think girl talk to a guy. It's dear clear
that girl talk to um. Let's see what do you
want to call out for? M hmm. 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,
(23:38):
but let's do it again that boy. Um, 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 uh, let's see. You
can tweet to us at s y s K podcast.
That's our handle Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should
Know is us on Facebook, and you can send us
an email to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com.
(24:05):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's
How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. H
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Josh Clark
Chuck Bryant
Show Links
Order Our BookRSSStoreSYSK ArmyAboutPopular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Death, Sex & Money
Anna Sale explores the big questions and hard choices that are often left out of polite conversation.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.