A Ludicrous Story of Shotguns, Camelbacks and Property Tax

Before the Civil War New Orleans was the second largest city in the United States by population, over 100,000. Only New York was bigger. At that time, the federal government was funded by import & export duties and the states and local governments were funded by property taxes.

New Orleans was sensitive to property taxes. To make the job of the assessors easier, the assessors adopted a rule that said that property taxes were proportional to the front footage of the lot, that is, the length of the lot along its street. The depth of lots was pretty consistent because the streets were pretty consistently laid out. That rule was relatively accurate because land, not the building, was the valuable thing.

To minimize property tax, lots were narrow but deep. As a result of that, houses were similarly narrow but deep. Compare that concept with more modern development patterns - the ranch style house, wide but only one or two rooms deep. The New Orleans house of that time became known as a shotgun house because it was said that you could stand in the front door and shoot a shotgun all the way through to the rear wall without hitting anything within. Hallways were avoided because they took up valuable room width inside the house.

The shotgun double became popular then. A shotgun double was two residences under one roof and the building was two rooms wide, instead of the shotgun’s single room width. The double has two front doors and the two residences share a common set of center chimneys. Each room had a fireplace for heat. This style saved the narrow alleys between each house that lead to the back yard as well as the construction cost of the multiple chimneys.

Citizens of New Orleans complained that their neighbor with a two story house paid the same property tax as that paid by the owner of a one story house. The assessors changed their rule to one that determined property taxes under a formula: the front footage times the number of stories the house had.

As a result of that rule change, the camel back house was born. A camel back house has a hump at the back; it was two stories tall in the back but only one story in the front. The assessors made a new rule that determined how far back the hump began before the house was determined to be a two story house.

Nevertheless, the property owners complained that the much grander camel back down the street paid the same tax as the single story house. In exasperation, the assessors made an entirely new rule: the tax would be based on the number of rooms within the house.

To the extent that anyone considered it previously, closets became totally unrealistic. A closet was counted as a room because a closet is an enclosed space with a door. So instead of closets, home owners used furniture to store clothes - the chiffarobe was born.

So, the New Orleans house is narrow and deep. It has no closets or hallways but every room has a fire place. City water and sewerage was added later so all the rooms that require this are at the back of the house at the site of the back porch.

from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_tax