shotgun shack, shotgun house, railroad flat, etc

[Joel S. Berson]

At 9/22/2005 11:06 PM, you wrote:
>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

This is how I remember the term "railroad flat" from my youth in NYC
(circa 1945-1950) -- a single line of rooms running from front to
rear, obviously for lots with vary narrow street fronts.  My memory
says a corridor, but I do not remember actually ever being in such a
flat.  There are presumably some still in NYC that were not affected
by Katrina.

I did not hear the term "shotgun shack" in NYC then.

Joel