What's a "Shotgun" house?

Thought you might like to see the floor plan of the "double shotgun" house we gutted - note the 4 fireplaces. As you can imagine, usable property in New Orleans has always been scarce. To fit the maximum number of homes on limited space, lots were configured to be very narrow - the average being about 35 feet wide - making this long dwelling configuration nearly universal - especially in the more modest neighborhoods. The result is many houses, close together and close to the street.

The origin of the name "shotgun house" supposedly comes from the saying that you could shoot a shotgun through the front door and the pellets would fly cleanly through the house and out the back door without hitting anything. Aside from wondering why anyone would want to DO that, there is some evidence that the expression is a corruption of an African word from the Dahoumey-Fon region - "to-gun" meaning "place of assembly".
- Dinah