shotgun shack, shotgun house, railroad flat, etc

[Sam Clements]

I don't think that there had to be a "real" corridor/hallway going down the
length of the house.  The corridor could have been nothing but the door
in/door out of each room.

Surely there are still examples of these houses left for people to visit.
Can someone do this and post back?

Sam Clements

----- Original Message -----
From: "sagehen" <sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2005 11:06 PM
Subject: Re: shotgun shack, shotgun house, railroad flat, etc


> >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
>