shotgun shack, shotgun house, railroad flat, etc

[Wilson Gray]

The type of building that I know as a "shotgun shack" isn't nearly as
fancy as some of dwellings described here. As a kid in Texas, I lived
across the street - a dirt road, actually, consisting of what was
locally known as "red clay-doit" when it was dry and as "gumbo mud"
when it was wet - from two shotgun shacks. These each consisted of a
front porch, a front door, a front room, a bedroom, a kitchen, and a
back door, one behind the other, period. They were built of wood, set
on wooden pilings and had the legendary hot tin roofs/rooves. The two
houses shared a privy situated in the backyard between the the two
shacks. Each was about as wide as a double-wide "mobile home."

-Wilson Gray

On 9/23/05, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: shotgun shack, shotgun house, railroad flat, etc
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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
>


--
-Wilson Gray