This year, Cottage Living Magazine built its 2007 Idea Home in New Orleans. This home is now open for tours through September 3.
Cottage Living Magazine Home
Cottage Living Magazine has sponsored "Idea Homes" for the last two years. This year, the magazine decided to help the comeback of the city and build a modular "shotgun" home in New Orleans. Due to the massive destruction in the city caused by Hurricane Katrina and the difficulty of rebuilding, interest in modular homes has been high. Cottage Living teamed with the New Orleans Preservation Resource Center to build the home, designed by Eric Moser. Operation Comeback Revolving Fund, part of the non-profit organization, will receive all of the proceeds from the sale of the house.
The Shotgun House
The style is often thought to be named for the tradition that if a shotgun were fired through the front door of this narrow home,the bullet would exit through the back door. Modern scholarship suggests the name is actually a corruption of the word “shogon,” which in Africa means “God’s House.” The architectural style is usually simple, a single row of a few rooms that run perpendicular to the street. The homes have a front porch, often with a gabled roof. This 19th century style allows more houses to be built on a city block. It is believed that the free blacks in New Orleans, who made up about a third of the population in 1810, brought the shotgun house design from Haiti with them.
In New Orleans, shotgun homes were variously styled from Greek Revival to shotgun doubles (sides that mirror each other) to "camelbacks", with a partial second story on the rear end of the house. The single row of rooms made it easier to stay cool in the sub-tropical climate. Often thought of as housing for the poor, the fact is that the fabled Garden District has 215 shotgun houses. Many of these structures were in the Ninth Ward and were entirely destroyed.
The Model On Camp Street
The model home is located uptown at 4505 Camp Street. It has 2400 square feet of living area, 3 bedrooms and two baths. You can tour it from 11 a.m. through 5 p.m., Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, through September 3. Tickets cost $10.00, cash or check only. In October, the magazine website will offer a virtual tour and there will also be a special magazine section that month. Plans for the home, which can be built either traditionally or in modular form, will be sold by the magazine. for more information go to the Preservation Resource Center website.
