Two-Bay Creole Cottages

Two-bay Creole cottages are a relatively rare architectural type found only in New Orleans oldest residential neighborhoods. At first glance, these homes may look like a typical two-bay single shotgun house, but there are distinct differences between the two.

Creole cottages pre-date shotguns by roughly half a century, appearing during the late 18th to early 19th centuries, while shotguns appeared around 1840. Creole cottages are more shallow than shotguns, but the easiest way to tell them apart is by the roof line. The roof line of a shotgun runs perpendicular to the street, while a Creole cottage roof line runs parallel to the street.

Additionally, Creole cottages generally have a steep gabled roof that contain a half-story on the second floor, while shotguns usually have hipped roofs and do not contain a second floor (with the exception of camelback shotguns). Finally, Creole cottages have an overhang or abat-vent and are built right up to the sidewalk, while shotguns generally have galleries and are set further back on the property.

Most Creole cottages have four bays (usually two doors and two windows in front). The four-bay cottages are two rooms wide and two rooms deep. There are no interior hallways (which improved circulation before modern air conditioners) and each room opens into the next. Kitchens were initially built in a separate outbuilding in the back of the property, but after 1840 they were built as attachments to the back of the cottage.

The two-bay Creole cottage is small by today’s standards, being half the size of the four-bay with two openings in front, one room wide, and two rooms deep. The earliest examples contained two doors that opened onto the sidewalk, but after 1830 one door and one window became standard. Most of them were weatherboarded, but some were brick-between-post construction or plastered brick.

Although four-bay cottages are still prevalent in New Orleans, the two-bays are fairly rare. They appear in neighborhoods like Treme, Marigny, and New Marigny with greater frequency simply because those areas were being developed during a time when the type was very popular, and before the time when shotguns became more widely used. In an effort to document the remaining two-bay Creole cottages and advocate for their continued preservation, we will be locating and photographing them in the coming weeks. Keep an eye on the PRC’s Flickr page for new photographs of this wonderful, early type of New Orleans architecture!

Do you know where two-bay Creole cottages can be found around the city? Leave us a comment and let us know!