Meaning
A shotgun house is a narrow, usually one-room-wide house type strongly associated with New Orleans, traditionally arranged several rooms deep with rooms opening directly into one another and no internal hallway.
How it is used
The City of New Orleans Vieux Carré glossary defines shotgun single and shotgun double building types by their narrow form, room-to-room circulation, and lack of an internal hall. Tulane architecture scholarship describes shotgun houses as architectural icons closely tied to New Orleans while emphasizing deeper West African and Caribbean roots rather than presenting the form as an isolated local invention.
Examples
- “The block has a row of narrow shotgun houses.”
- “The renovation kept the basic shotgun-house layout.”
Pronunciation
/ˈʃɑːtɡʌn haʊs/ · SHOT-gun house
Tone and register
Neutral and descriptive. The term can refer to a historic building type, a contemporary house that preserves the layout, or a design that adapts the typology.
Visitor guidance
Do not repeat the folk explanation that a shotgun blast could travel straight through the house as proven etymology. The physical straight-through layout is real, but architectural historians emphasize a more complex history of Caribbean, Haitian, West African, colonial, and New Orleans development.
Cultural context
Shotgun houses are central to the visual and social fabric of many New Orleans neighborhoods. Their compact lots, porches, room sequence, and repeated street rhythm reflect housing history, migration, climate adaptation, and neighborhood life as well as architectural style.
Places represented
Open the reviewed place guide for each regional sense carried by this canonical entry.