An "engines" episode mentioned "shotgun houses". I'll be surprised if you can tell what it
refers to without searching.
It reminded me of a southern style long gone. For poor folks it provided comfort in hot
weather. Called a "dogtrot house". I'll bet only milum knows this one.

Nah, you're wrong Dr Bill! This old house featured a shotgun house in New Orlean's a few years ago, so many PBS veiwers know them..

of course, in the north, in tenements, the same layout was called a 'railroad' flat, and old ones were very un appealing. (since many of the windows only opened onto chimney like air shafts.)
one of my fathers older cousins lived in one, complete with a soapstone sink, made into a double sink with a divider, and you took the divider out to make a bath tub! it was a low sink for washing, but high for a tub, generally the worst of both!

My father was born and raised in a shotgun shack. We lived in the house next door when I was born. The one-room wide house is not exclusive to the south. You could stand in the back door (which entered the kitchen) and look straight down the house to the front door (which entered the porch overlooking the lake).

I know it, too. And it's so-called because you can aim a shortgun through the house from the front door and hit something at the back door.

Milum, where are you when we need you? Or does anybody else know what a dogtrot is?

yes, and railroad flat was the same... but seeing as how railroad cars were more common in NYC than shotguns, a different name for the same thing, almost..

the entry door to the apartment was on the side, but once in the front room, you could see through to the last room, (usually the location of the fire escape) windows in the interior rooms opened on to shafts, sometimes the were cut in at a corner, so the shaft had 4 window, per floor, two from one apartment and two from an other apartment (in an other building) unless you were on the top floor, the windows got almost no light, and less fresh air.

when i was a kid, my parents apartment was a step up.. it had a long straight hall, one side of the apartment.. you opened the front door, the was an entry to living room on the left, straight ahead, a foyer, and from that a left entry to the dining room at the end of the foyer, the hall (in line with the front entry door,) was 60 feet long! (we had a 7 room apartment and every room came off that hall!) at the end was the entry to my parents bedroom.
Shot would have spattered before it hit the window in the back of my parents bedroom!