Shotgun House, 1906
<< Back
to Virtural Tour
This house was built in 1906 at
2807 Guillot Street in the historic State-Thomas neighborhood north of
down-town Dallas. It is a typical shotgun house, which is defined as "a house
that is one room wide and at least two rooms deep." The name of this style of
house may be derived from an African word "to-gun" meaning a place of assembly.
Folk etymology, however, attributes the name to the fact that you could shoot a
shotgun straight through the house because of its arrangement.
Houses of this type are simple and inexpensive to construct and their economic
use of land made them ideal tenant houses. This was one of ten shotgun houses
which stood in a row along Guillot Street. Owned by Dr. David Graham Hall, a
local physician, this house was rented by a working-class African-American
family.
Because the house is so small, the rooms served multiple purposes; the front
sitting room also contains a child’s bed, and the dining table is in the
kitchen.
The quilt pattern in the background is called "Maple Leaf". Information about
this and other patterns can be found at the
World Wide Quilting Page.
|