News-Record.com

Preservationists are grieving over the loss in flooded New Orleans of a certain style of dwelling, the humble shotgun house. The Crescent City had hundreds of these narrow houses on small lots close to the street.

In many Southern cities, shotgun houses were considered shacks and shanties. But New Orleans embraced them - or did until Hurricane Katrina knocked them down or flooded them beyond repair.

The New York Times reported last week about how these houses and how they meant so much to the city's culture and character.

In Greensboro, the demise of shotgun houses caused just the opposite reaction: good riddance. Hundreds, nearly all on the predominantly black east side, were bulldozed during redevelopment projects in the 1960s.

Along a now vanished section of Percy Street, near the railroad tracks between East Market and Lindsay streets, shotgun houses lined both sides of the street. The city garbage incinerator also was on this stretch of Percy.

Shotgun houses also dominated many side streets, including now departed Nixon's Alley, between the railroad and the N.C. A&T State University campus. No one who lived in them or passed by them ever described them as charming.

In Greensboro, shotguns tended to be unpainted, bleak and built with the cheapest lumber.

But now they're mostly gone, and lovers of old architect miss them. Several dozen or more survived redevelopment. Now most of those are gone.

Mike Cowhig, a planner for the city's Department of Housing and Community Development, says his list shows only four shotgun houses remaining: 2005 Stamey St, 1007 Bennett St., 1715 McConnell Road and 1918 Golden Gate Drive.

A drive to the four addreses found three of the four gone. On Stamey Street, which dead-ends into U.S. 29 North, the shotgun house has been replaced by a new frame house. A new brick home stands at 1007 Bennett and 1715 McConnell is now a vacate lot.

However, a boarded-up shotgun house remains at 1514 McConnell. And several duplex shotgun houses look well-kept in the same block. Brick shotguns are rare. Most were built of wood.

The most surprising surviving shotgun house is in what many Greensboro residents still call McAdoo Heights, off North Elm Street near Cornwallis Drive.

Located just off North Elm Street near Cornwallis Drive, it was a little town within the city, with most residents working for nearby Cone Mills.

The Heights' business thoroughfare was State Street. The old stores, including the notorious Pump Room tavern and the X-rated Star Theater, are long gone. The old commercial buildings have been transformed into fashionable stores, restaurants and offices.

The residential part of McAdoo Heights looks pretty much as before. Most of the houses are bungalows, several steps above shotgun houses. Yet one shotgun houses is squeezed in between two houses on Golden Gate Drive. It has an unusual white frame addition to the front that doesn't match the rest of the house, which is red shingles, also uncommon for a shotgun.

Shotgun houses get their name because it is said a person could stand at the front door, fire a shotgun and the shell would exit the back door. In some places they were called railroad houses, apparently because they stood on undesirable land near railroads, such Suggs and Percy streets. In Charleston, they're called Freedman Houses. Many freed slaves lived in them after the Civil War.

Wilson, in eastern North Carolina has a black neighborhood filled with shotgun houses that's listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In 1995, Abbie Powell of Augusta, Ga., a crusader for preserving shotgun houses, visited Greensboro and toured a row of houses on Broad Street, just off Bennett. The houses have since been demolished.

New Orleans loved its shotgun houses because of their quaintness. They sported different colors. Porches were of Victorian design, with gingerbread and other elaborate architectural ornamentation. Bunched together, the houses made it easy for a neighborhood to be neighborly.

The shotgun house design is said to date back to 17th century Africa and brought to the United States by Haitian immigrants who settled in New Orleans. The houses were ideal for New Orleans' steamy climate. High ceilings made for good air circulation. The timbers of choice were cypress and cedar, stalwarts against water and moisture. The houses were sturdy.

"I visited a friend who lived in one," Cowhig says. "It was wonderful."

The shotguns withstood dozens of hurricanes until Katrina came along. Whether they'll be rebuilt remains to be seen.