| dogtrot house |
| the story behind the photos dogtrot house |
| So...what, exactly, is a dogtrot house? |
Back in the days before air conditioning--or electricity for that
matter--clever Southerners devised a way to create breezes
through their homes--even on hot, humid summer days. They did
this by building homes with a central, open breezeway (the dogtrot)
that ran through the center of the home.
On one of the days during my mid-summer photo shoot of this
dogtrot house in Conecuh Co., AL, I stood at the back of the
dogtrot, facing the front of the house. I felt a strong refreshing
breeze blowing over me, despite the fact that a few steps away
from the house the air was still and sultry. It was really quite
amazing.
It is not difficult to surmise the origins of the name 'dogtrot'. One
can easily imagine the family dogs flopped out in the breezeway of
such a home, obliviously napping away the hot afternoon, then
rising as the sun sinks and the temperatures ease to trot happily
back and forth through the breezeway, checking out first the front
yard, then the back, then the front again to see what the family
members are up to. (And if there might be any food scraps
involved in these activities.)
Back in the 1980's, in my former life as a speech therapist in
southern Georgia, I made frequent home visits. One was to a
family living in a dogtrot house. When I pulled up in the yard (in the
South, it is common for more humble homes to have no driveway,
so one 'pulls up in the yard'), it was not a greeting committee of the
family dogs that came trotting out of the home's breezeway to
meet me, but a trio of chickens flying out into the front yard,
cackling in loud alarm at my arrival. I suppose that the dogtrot's
breezeway has just as commonly served as 'chicken roost' as it
has 'dog trot'!
The home I visited that day had the typical dogtrot floor plan:
the left side of the house was comprised solely of a large
communal bedroom; the right side of the house was comprised of
a day room with the house's only heat source--a wood burning
stove, and behind it at the rear of the house was a small addition
that served as the family's kitchen. There was no indoor plumbing,
and the family members slept on pallets on the floor in the
communal bedroom. (And you thought 'sharing the family bed'
was a modern, yuppie invention!)
This style house is often incorrectly identified as a 'shotgun' house.
A shotgun house, however, is one in which the rooms are
arranged in a straight line, one behind the other, running
perpendicular to the road. The story goes that the name comes
from the notion that if all the doors in the house were open, a
person could shoot a bullet straight through the house and out the
back door.
There are still many dogtrot houses standing in the South, though
more and more are devolving into disrepair--and who knows how
many will fall in the next hurricane? We lost so many old homes,
barns and stores in the hurricanes of recent years. There is no
historic preservation society making them their favorite cause. So,
when I see a dotrot house, I grab my camera from my back seat
and start shooting. Someone has to preserve these glorious
houses that remind us that ideas such as 'passive cooling' and
'intelligent design' are not newly discovered notions!
matter--clever Southerners devised a way to create breezes
through their homes--even on hot, humid summer days. They did
this by building homes with a central, open breezeway (the dogtrot)
that ran through the center of the home.
On one of the days during my mid-summer photo shoot of this
dogtrot house in Conecuh Co., AL, I stood at the back of the
dogtrot, facing the front of the house. I felt a strong refreshing
breeze blowing over me, despite the fact that a few steps away
from the house the air was still and sultry. It was really quite
amazing.
It is not difficult to surmise the origins of the name 'dogtrot'. One
can easily imagine the family dogs flopped out in the breezeway of
such a home, obliviously napping away the hot afternoon, then
rising as the sun sinks and the temperatures ease to trot happily
back and forth through the breezeway, checking out first the front
yard, then the back, then the front again to see what the family
members are up to. (And if there might be any food scraps
involved in these activities.)
Back in the 1980's, in my former life as a speech therapist in
southern Georgia, I made frequent home visits. One was to a
family living in a dogtrot house. When I pulled up in the yard (in the
South, it is common for more humble homes to have no driveway,
so one 'pulls up in the yard'), it was not a greeting committee of the
family dogs that came trotting out of the home's breezeway to
meet me, but a trio of chickens flying out into the front yard,
cackling in loud alarm at my arrival. I suppose that the dogtrot's
breezeway has just as commonly served as 'chicken roost' as it
has 'dog trot'!
The home I visited that day had the typical dogtrot floor plan:
the left side of the house was comprised solely of a large
communal bedroom; the right side of the house was comprised of
a day room with the house's only heat source--a wood burning
stove, and behind it at the rear of the house was a small addition
that served as the family's kitchen. There was no indoor plumbing,
and the family members slept on pallets on the floor in the
communal bedroom. (And you thought 'sharing the family bed'
was a modern, yuppie invention!)
This style house is often incorrectly identified as a 'shotgun' house.
A shotgun house, however, is one in which the rooms are
arranged in a straight line, one behind the other, running
perpendicular to the road. The story goes that the name comes
from the notion that if all the doors in the house were open, a
person could shoot a bullet straight through the house and out the
back door.
There are still many dogtrot houses standing in the South, though
more and more are devolving into disrepair--and who knows how
many will fall in the next hurricane? We lost so many old homes,
barns and stores in the hurricanes of recent years. There is no
historic preservation society making them their favorite cause. So,
when I see a dotrot house, I grab my camera from my back seat
and start shooting. Someone has to preserve these glorious
houses that remind us that ideas such as 'passive cooling' and
'intelligent design' are not newly discovered notions!
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