Shotgun House - Decline and Legacy

Decline and Legacy

The construction of shotgun houses slowed and eventually stopped during the early 20th century. The affordability of two technological innovations, the car and consumer air conditioning units, made the key advantages of the shotgun house obsolete to home buyers. After World War II, shotgun houses had very little appeal to those building or buying new houses, as car-oriented modern suburbs were built en masse. Few shotgun houses have been built in America since the war, although the concept of a simple, single-level floor plan lived on in ranch-style houses.

The surviving urban shotgun houses suffered problems related to those typically facing the inner city neighborhoods in which they were located. The flight of affluent residents to the suburbs, absentee owners, and a shortage of mortgage lenders for inner city residents led to the deterioration of shotgun houses in the mid and late 20th century. Confusing ownership, passed down within a family over several generations, also contributed to many houses sitting vacant for years.

Though shotguns are sometimes perceived as being housing prevalent in poor African American neighborhoods, many were originally built heavily in segregated white neighborhoods. Many of these neighborhoods became predominantly black during the 1950s and 1960s, but many others did not and remain predominantly white.

Regardless of who was living in them, from World War II until the 1980s, shotguns came to be widely viewed as substandard housing and a symbol of poverty, and they were demolished by many urban renewal projects. This thinking is no longer so prevalent, with cities such as Houston and Charlotte establishing "Shotgun Historic Districts". Shotgun houses have even been praised as quality and cost-effective cultural assets that promote a distinctive urban life. Other cities, such as Macon, Georgia, experimented with renovating shotgun houses for low-income residents and, though split on whether it is cheaper to tear them down and build new housing, some were rebuilt.

There are many large neighborhoods in older American cities of the south which still contain a high concentration of shotgun houses today. Examples include Bywater in New Orleans; Portland, Butchertown, and Germantown in Louisville; and Cabbagetown in Atlanta. Their role in the history of the south has become recognized; for example, in October 2001, Rice University sponsored an exhibition called "Shotguns 2001". This three-day event featured lectures on and artistic paintings of the houses, as well as presentations and panel discussions in a neighborhood of restored shotguns.

In some shotgun-dominated neighborhoods, property value has become quite high, leading to gentrification. Sometimes, a new owner will buy both homes of a double-barreled shotgun structure, and combine them to form a relatively large single house. Shotguns are also often combined to renovate them into office or storage space.