The long, narrow and humble shotgun house, ubiquitous in Louisville’s oldest neighborhoods, tells a remarkable story of working-class and architectural history, traced back across rivers, seas and centuries.
The shotgun house has its North American roots in New Orleans more than 200 years ago, amid an influx of free and enslaved Black people from Haiti. Some historians trace its origins earlier, to plantation housing in Haiti and traditional dwellings and Yoruba architecture in West Africa.
Louisville was born as an Ohio River port city, forming an early connection to New Orleans at the gulf. The idea of the shotgun house migrated along the meandering Mississippi and Ohio rivers north to river cities like Louisville, where it took on a life of its own…