Shotgun House Heritage — Tremé & Marigny

The shotgun house — one room wide, three to five rooms deep, front door to back door in a straight line — is the most important residential building type in New Orleans. An estimated 10,000 remain in the city, concentrated in Tremé, the Marigny, and the Bywater. The form likely originated in Haiti, carried to New Orleans by free people of color after the Haitian Revolution. The straight hall creates natural ventilation — essential before air conditioning arrived in the 1950s. The front porch functions as a social room, connecting private life to the street. Bernard de Marigny subdivided his plantation east of the Vieux Carré in 1806. The neighborhood grew rapidly. He spent most of 1806 and 1807 at the office of notary Narcisse Broutin selling sixty-foot lots to prospective home builders. He sold to white Creoles, to free black Creoles, and to emigrés from Saint Domingue who flooded into Louisiana following the revolution on that island. Lots were sold all the way into the 1820s. Walk Tremé, the Marigny, or the Bywater to see the form in every variation — single, double, camelback. The porch is still the room that matters.