shotgun shack, shotgun house, railroad flat, etc

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:53 AM -0500 9/23/05, Barbara Need wrote:
>At 22:36 -0400 22/9/05, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
>>On Thu, Sep 22, 2005 at 06:58:36PM -0400, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
>>  >
>>>  Is "shotgun" really used for a building with a central hall?
>>>
>>>  I think the dwellings which I've heard referred to as "shotgun
>>>  houses/apartments/etc." generally had rooms in a row from front to back (no
>>>  hall at all).
>>
>>Yes, I agree with this too. I was merely pointing out that the
>>entry is there. Our revision file already has notes that we need
>>to correct these defs.
>>
>>Jesse Sheidlower
>>OED
>
>Actually, I most recently had the image of a central hall in my mind
>from some book I read as a child about migrant workers. But now that
>I think about it, I think the description in the book was of doors
>all in a line, not the same thing! I do know that when the pictures
>of the shotgun homes appeared in the paper I surprised by the floor
>layout, which does NOT have a central hall.

I'm more familiar with the "railroad flat" term, but I've always
pictured both those and the shotgun shacks/houses as strings of beads
from the front door to the "caboose"--mostly from depictions in books
or movies--rather than rooms off a central corridor.

Larry

>
>At 23:06 -0400 22/9/05, sagehen wrote:
>>
>>  >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.
>
>They are still there! I have lived in them. In general the hallway
>runs along one side of the rooms (like the corridor in some
>compartment trains). Sometimes there is one room off to the other
>side (where there is no stairwell running up the building).
>
>Barbara Need
>UChicago