tgun houses were built, and existing ones went into decline. By the late 20th century, shotgun houses in some areas were being restored as housing and for other uses.Shotgun houses were often initially built as rental properties, located near manufacturing centers or railroad hubs, to provide housing choices for workers. Owners of factories frequently built the houses to rent specifically to employees, usually for a few dollars a month. By the late 20th century, however, shotguns were often owner-occupied. For example, 85% of the houses (many of them shotgun) in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward were owner-occupied. CharacteristicsFloor plan of a typical single shotgun with bathroomThe rooms of a shotgun house are lined up one behind the other, typically a living room is first, then one or two bedrooms, and finally a kitchen in back. Early shotgun houses were not built with bathrooms, but in later years a bathroom with a small hall was built before the last room of the house, or a side addition was built off the kitchen. Some shotguns may have as few as two rooms.Chimneys tended to be built in the interior, allowing the front and middle rooms to share a chimney with a fireplace opening in each room. The kitchen usually has its own chimney.Other than the basic floor layout, shotgun houses have many standard features in common. The house is almost always close to the street, sometimes with a very short front yard, and no porch. In some cases, the house has no front yard and is actually flush with the sidewalk. The original steps were wood, but were often replaced with permanent concrete steps.Sketch of a typical camelback, or one and a half story, shotgun house, with a detailed sketch of a typical decorative wooden door bracketA sign of its New Orleans heritage, the house is usually raised two to three feet off the ground. There is a single door and window in the front of the house, and often a side door leading into the back room, which is slightly wider than the rest of the house. The front door and window often were originally covered by decorative shutters. Side walls may or may not have windows; rooms not adjoining the front nor back door will generally have at least one window even when the houses are built very close together.Typically, shotgun houses have a wood frame structure and wood siding, although some examples exist in brick and even stone. Many shotguns, especially older or less expensive ones, have flat roofs that end at the front wall of the house. In houses built after 1880, the roof usually overhangs the front wall, and there is usually a gable above the overhang. The overhang is usually supported by decorative wooden brackets, and sometimes contains cast iron ventilators.The rooms are well-sized, and have relatively high ceilings for cooling purposes, as when warm air can rise higher, the lower part of a room tends to be cooler. The lack of hallways allows for efficient cross-ventilation in every room. Rooms usually have some decoration such as moldings, ceiling medallions, and elaborate woodwork. In cities like New Orleans, local industries supplied elaborate but mass-produced brackets and other ornaments for shotgun houses that were accessible even to homeowners of modest means. VariationsA conventional one-story freestanding shotgun house is often called a single shotgun. Many common variations exist in high quantity, and are often actually more common than the single shotgun in cities.A double shotgun structure in the Uptown neighborhood of New Orleans. Double shotgun houses were a form of multiple-family housing, where essentially two conventional shotgun houses shared a central wall.Double Shotgun, also called double-barrel shotgun, essentially two shotgun houses connected to each other and sharing a central wall. They are a form of Semi-detached housing. The double shotgun requires less land per household than the traditional shotgun and was used extensively in poorer areas because it could be built with fewer materials and use less land per occupant. It was first seen in New Orleans in 1854.Camelback house, also called Humpback, a variation of the Shotgun that has a partial second floor over the rear of the house. Camelback houses were built in the later period of shotgun houses. The floor plan and construction is very similar to the traditional shotgun house, except there are stairs in the back room leading up the second floor. The second floor, or "hump", contains one to four rooms. Because it was only a partial second story, most cities only taxed it as a single-story house - in fact this was a key reason for their construction.Double Width Shotgun, is where an extra large and wide shotgun house would be built on two lots instead of one. These were typically built one to a block in locations where a single person would first buy the entire city block during development, then build themselves a double sized home and then subdivide the rest of the block with single lot homes."North shore" houses, shotgun houses with wide verandas on three sides. They were so named because most were built on the north shore of New Orleans' Lake Pontchartrain as summer homes for wealthy whites.The term may also refer to a different structure, common in rural areas and small towns, which takes the form of a small, long, free-standing house, generally made of wood, with no hallways. Unlike the larger terraced version, this is generally a single-storied dwelling, but it was still associated with poverty and popular partially because of its ability to make hot weather more comfortable. It was most prevalent along waterways and bayous in rural Louisiana.A combination, the Double Camelback shotgun, also exists. A minor variation is a side door allowing access to the kitchen, or a porch along the side extending almost the length of the house.A classic camelback shotgun house in Uptown New Orleans Decline and legacyThe construction of shotgun houses slowed and eventually stopped during the early 20th century. The affordability of two technological innovations, the car and consumer air conditioning units, made the key advantages of the shotgun house obsolete to home buyers. After World War II, shotgun houses had very little appeal to those building or buying new houses, as car-oriented modern suburbs were built en masse. Few shotgun houses have been built in America since the war, although the concept of a simple, single-level floor plan lived on in ranch-style houses.The surviving urban shotgun houses suffered problems related to those typically facing the inner city neighborhoods in which they were located. The flight of affluent residents to the suburbs, absentee owners, and a shortage of mortgage lenders for inner city residents led to the deterioration of shotgun houses in the mid and late 20th century. Confusing ownership, passed down within a family over several generations, also contributed to many houses sitting vacant for years.Though shotguns are sometimes perceived as being housing prevalent in poor African American neighborhoods, many were originally built heavily in segregated white neighborhoods. Many of these neighborhoods became predominantly black during the 1950s and 1960s, but many others did not and remain predominantly white.Regardless of who was living in them, from World War II until the 1980s, shotguns came to be widely viewed as substandard housing and a symbol of poverty, and they were demolished by many urban renewal projects. This thinking is no longer so prevalent, with cities such as Houston and Charlotte establishing "Shotgun Historic Districts". Shotgun houses have even been praised as quality and cost-effective cultural assets that promote a distinctive urban life. Other cities, such as Macon, Georgia, experimented with renovating shotgun houses for low-income residents, but found that it is cheaper and more effective to tear them down and build new housing.A camelback house in Louisville's Paristown neighborhood. The perpendicular section makes it not a shotgun.There are many large neighborhoods in older American cities of the south which still contain a high concentration of shotgun houses today. Examples include Bywa