

- Louisiana shotgun style house layout plans free#
- Louisiana shotgun style house layout plans windows#
In its purest form, the Creole cottage features a squarish plan with a grid of four adjoining rooms that interconnect without hallways. Shotgun houses are a rather pervasive historical type in the American South, but the Creole cottage is distinct to south Louisiana.

This compelling setting is evocative of the lower French Quarter or the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans where narrow shotgun houses and Creole cottages are nestled as close to each other as they are to the narrow street. Here, amid an otherwise suburban setting, one will find a delightful urban surprise-an intimate urban street graced by historically inspired facades abutting the sidewalk. With its rambling suburban neighborhoods, Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s capital city, doesn’t share the same storied architectural heritage of its larger downriver neighbor, New Orleans, except in rare instances such as Eliza Beaumont Lane. The Victorian ornamental brackets adorning the roof overhang were purchased from a New Orleans salvage yard.
Louisiana shotgun style house layout plans windows#
The large four-over-four front windows with segmental arches were salvaged from the St. They were architects, they were building owners, and we can walk through the old quarters and still see their legacy today.This six-bay Creole cottage designed by Mike Waller is, in fact, a pair of townhouses. “This forgotten history is something to be very proud of. Nevertheless, Hopkins wants the public to remember the origins of the city's architecture, too. Some families even left the United States, such as the Soulié family, who moved to France.”

Life was still oppressive and they suffered discrimination.
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Some of the free families of color didn’t stay to live amongst their legacy. “Free people of color were integral in important real estate development in the city in the early 19 th century-a legacy that helps define our city today-but they did it against all odds, amidst constant oppression. “Discrimination was ever-present and oppressive, and the freedoms they did have were constantly threatened,” de Sol continues. Though deemed “Free” people of color, they certainly did not enjoy the freedoms that white residents of the city had. The challenges they faced were incredible, however. There’s much evidence that shotgun houses, which are a symbol of our city, have origins in Africa.” Del Sol adds, “The Black citizens who lived in New Orleans, by choice or otherwise, had immeasurable impact on the architecture of the city. “The architecture designed by these Creole families and architect types had French, Spanish, and African influence, much of it by way of the Caribbean,” Del Sol says.Įnslaved people contributed greatly to the foundation of New Orleans, as did free craftsmen, masons, and millworkers. The museum rests inside a grand white mansion built by the Cuban designer Benjamin Rodriguez in 1859. The Free People of Color Museum offers a wealth of information on free people of color in New Orleans, told by their descendants. The Spanish wrought-iron balconies, curved, elegant staircases, and arched paths for horse-drawn carriages are just as they were nearly 200 years ago. The Soniat House Hotel comprises both town homes and is pristinely restored. The architect was commissioned by a white landowner to design a Creole town house and, later, a second one across the street. The Soniat House Hotel, one of New Orleans’s finest family-owned boutique properties, was designed by Francois Boisdore, a free man of color. While some of these homes remain modern-day residences, a few are open to the public. Spanish and French rule helped shape this side of town, downriver from Canal Street, allowing enslaved people to buy their freedom and Black architects to design and build.Īndrew LaMar Hopkins's painting of Jean-Louis Dolliole at his Creole cottage home. Black architects and their prolific work in this era are a part of history that’s omitted from schoolbooks, erased and forgotten, yet proudly resurfaces on meandering strolls through New Orleans’s oldest quarters: the French Quarter, Tremé, and Faubourg Marigny. Despite oppression and discrimination, these free people of color overcame great odds. “Louisiana had one of the largest, richest Black populations, due to its French and Spanish background, which is different from the rest of Anglicized America.”īefore the Civil War, New Orleans had the largest group of free people of color in the United States. “Not many people realize there was a prosperous group of free men and women of color in the 18th and 19th centuries,” says Andrew LaMar Hopkins, a contemporary artist whose work shines historic light on scenes of noble Creole life in early New Orleans.
