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The material in this unit may be used to address the following Social Studies Standards
SIMILARITY TO NATIONAL NORMS: Louisiana's Victorian houses generally resembled those in other states. Reasons for this resemblance included: Standardization of building materials. Decorative components were produced in factories and mills by machines and were sold through catalogs circulated throughout the nation. Arrival of Railroads. Formerly isolated Louisiana towns began receiving information on national building trends and styles when railroads arrived in the later years of the nineteenth century. Popularity
of Pattern Books.
Houses
were often built using blueprints purchased from publishers of pattern
books.
Pattern
books contained illustrations and floorplans depicting a selection of
houses, from small laborers' cottages to large dwellings in a variety
of architectural styles.
Builders'
guides, the precursor of pattern books, had existed since at least the
1820s; they became more and more popular as technology made printing
easier and less expensive.
Even when houses were locally designed, elements depicted in pattern books often influenced style and decorative choices. Mail
Order Houses. Some companies (Radford Company, Aladin Homes)
and department stores (Sears, Montgomery Ward) sold entire houses via
mail. House packages, chosen from catalogs and shipped to the
building site by railroad and wagon, contained all the information and
materials needed to complete the house. Local carpenters erected
the buildings by matching numbers on the pre-cut materials to numbers
on the blueprints.
THE SHOTGUN HOUSE: The shotgun is a single story house only one room wide and three or more rooms deep. Most lack hallways; some use open side galleries for circulation. Interior doors are often lined up so that one can see through the entire house to its end. A shotgun's roof ridge is perpendicular to the street. Scholars disagree concerning the shotgun's origin. Some claim it originated in Africa; others believe it developed when New Orleans builders turned the hallless Creole cottage sideways so that its narrow side faced the street. Regardless of
its origin, the shotgun spread throughout the South, as far north
as Kentucky, and as far west as Colorado.
In New Orleans during the Victorian Era the shotgun became popular as a home for middle and working class families who purchased narrow suburban lots for their residences. On
many lots double shotguns (two shotguns sharing a party wall beneath
a common roof) were constructed.
Although most shotguns in the nation are extremely simple and plain, in New Orleans shotgun facades are highly decorated. The
shotgun remained popular in New Orleans well into the twentieth century.
Today thousands of shotguns survive in Victorian (Italianate, Eastlake)
and early twentieth century (Colonial Revival, Bungalow) styles.
Shotguns were sometimes converted into camelbacks (shotgun type houses with two room, two story sections at the rear above the back two rooms). Although associated primarily with New Orleans, camelbacks are occasionally found in other areas. Examples of shotgun houses are provided within the various Victorian and Twentieth Century style sections. MIXING OF STYLES: Although some architects and builders constructed buildings which were pure examples of the Victorian Gothic Revival, Italianate, and Queen Anne Revival styles (see appropriate sections of the EZ Content Blueprint), others mixed decorative elements from two or more styles on the same facade. The building owner's goal was to have a picturesque structure, and Victorians believed that combining motifs from different styles helped to achieve that end. EXTERIOR COLOR: Contrary to what is typically seen today, Victorian era houses were not all painted white. Improving paint technology allowed Victorians to choose from a palette of ready-mixed colors, each of which could be identically reproduced by the manufacturer.
Polychrome paint schemes using colors similar to those found in nature
( brown, green, yellow,gray, olive, etc.) were popular.
POPULARITY OF PORCHES: Porches, always common in the South, gained nationwide popularity in the 1850s. Because they allowed residents to enjoy nature, porches became larger as the nineteenth century progressed. The
front "sitting porch" became a prominent feature of all
Victorian homes.
Specialized porches for sleeping, eating, and doing chores also became popular. Printable Version
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