shotgun shack, shotgun house, railroad flat, etc

[sagehen]

>I agree with Doug. Same for "railroad flat," should the question arise.
>
>JL
>
>Surely the lowliest "shotgun shack" cannot be typified by any sort of long
>hallway ... or any hallway ... or anything very long ... I wouldn't think.
>
>-- Doug Wilson
 ~~~~~~~~~~
There is this description  of what I have always thought of as a "railroad
flat" taken from a memoir of life at the end of the XIX Cent:

"In that district of Chicago's South Side that lay near the Exposition
grounds the blocks ran twelve to the mile and the flats ran back to the
alley.  Allow twenty feet behind for a cinder yard to beat carpets in, and
fifteen feet in front for grass, and  you can calculate the length of the
corridor that ran from front to rear of each flat and joined its single
line of seven rooms, bath, and lumber-room like beads on a string."
/Family Crisis/,  S.B. Gass,  1940

The "beads on a string" is a bit ambiguous, since apparently the corridor
ran alongside the rooms.

A. Murie