Shotgun Houses
(ca. 1896)
These two “shotgun” houses are rare surviving examples of the housing style that dominated Charlotte’s Black neighborhoods during much of the twentieth century.
230 and 236 Norwood Drive, Charlotte, NC 28208
The two houses located at 230 and 236 Norwood Drive represent the most common type of housing found in Charlotte’s Black neighborhoods during the first half of the twentieth century. The one-story hall-less design is said to have contributed to the houses’ “shotgun” name because it allowed a gunshot fired through the front door to travel through all of the rooms and out the back door without hitting a single wall. While seldom true, because the interior doorways of shotgun houses usually did not line up, the structure’s long narrow form did allow for numerous rows of these dwellings to be squeezed together along the side-streets and alleys of Black neighborhoods within the city’s First, Second, and Third Wards. Most were low to moderate income units rented by the week by absentee White landlords. The destruction of Charlotte’s extensive shotgun housing was a specific goal of the city’s Urban Renewal era of the 1960s and 1970s, making these two houses rare examples of a once-prevalent southern architectural style that can be traced back to Haiti to as early as the 1700s.
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These two houses were originally located on West Bland Street in a Third Ward neighborhood off South Tryon Street called “Blandville.” They were built as rental units by Charles E. McClure, an engineer with the cotton oil processing firm Charlotte Oil and Fertilizer Company, shortly after he purchased the land in 1896. McClure and his wife Rosa lived next door to the west in a large one-story house at the corner of West Bland and what was then Church Street. By the 1920s, Blandville had numerous shotgun houses. Mrs. McClure continued to rent these houses for some ten years after her husband’s 1911 death. The houses were sold at least three times during the 1920s before being acquired by the Mechanics Perpetual Building and Loan in a 1934 mortgage foreclosure. Both houses were lit by kerosene lamps and serviced by outdoor privies well into the mid-twentieth century. The Thomas F. Kerr Company purchased the houses in 1940, renting them for forty years until the City of Charlotte acquired the houses.
By 1985, these two shotguns houses were all that remained of Blandville. The houses were moved in 1986 to the corner of East Seventh and North Alexander Streets where they were renovated and used by Charlotte’s Afro-American Culture Center, and later the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture, to educate visitors about the city’s rich Black history. In 2020, the West Side Community Land Trust acquired both houses and relocated them to their current location on Norwood Drive as affordable housing in a rapidly gentrifying area.