One Family Negro House

Miami, February 11, 1941. Vintage blueprint (22 x 23 inches), white on blue ground, 1/4" to 1' scale, with architect's embossed seal lower right; strong, unfaded image, with some minor edge and surface wear, old creases. Original blueprint plan for a shotgun house, a narrow single-family gable-front home in which the rooms are arranged in a single file (one theory for the name being that one could fire a shotgun through the front door and it would pass through the house and out the rear door). The blueprint, by Miami architect George A. Coffin, formalizes what was essentially a folk or vernacular style built to efficiently house working class poor on narrow urban lots. Though both blacks and whites lived in shotgun houses (Elvis was born in one in Tupelo, Georgia), it is here marketed specifically as a One Family Negro House. The plan's designer George A. Coffin (1896-1969), started his architecture practice in Miami in 1934 after some 12 years of apprentice and junior draftsman positions at various firms in Philadelphia and Miami. Shortly after this shotgun house plan was drafted, Coffin was accepted as a member of the AIA and was over the years was active on the board of its south Florida chapter. He designed houses, resorts, clubs, and other structures, working primarily in Dade County, as well as Key West and Key Largo.The blueprint shows the plan, through-section and elevations of the house and outhouse, with measurements, construction details and materials (pine clapboard siding, asphalt roof, galvanized nails, Williamsons tung-oil paint, etc.). The house, comprising a porch, parlor, bedroom and kitchen, measures 12 ft wide by 36 ft deep with 8 foot ceilings. The outhouse is designed to accommodate two families, with a partition dividing the interior into two separate spaces, and suggesting that the plan was to be used in a neighborhood development project (more on that below). The association of the shotgun house with poverty and urban deindustrialization has led to many of the structures being razed for redevelopment and gentrification. However, these houses have increasingly been recognized as an important part of American architectural heritage and social history, especially in their association with historically black neighborhoods. (They have also become desirable living spaces in their own right, given the recent tiny house movement). One of the countrys most notable and well-preserved concentration of shotgun houses is in Miamis West Coconut Grove, built to house the neighborhoods primarily Bahamian immigrants. Miamis preservation board recently granted historic landmark designation to 50 West Coconut Grove shotgun houses (over opposition by developers and some property owners). Though most shotgun houses show a marked similarity in basic design, comparison of the present plan with photographs of West Coconut Grove do suggest the possibility that this plan, by a practicing Miami architect, was used in the construction of some of the neighborhoods shotgun houses. Given the shotgun house's folk origins, it's not surprising that I find no records of a similar blueprint.