Suburb Gracie, North, North Seventeenth, North Thirteenth & Fuqua Streets, Baton Rouge, East Baton Rouge Parish, LA

Significance: Since the early 1900s, the Whitaker Family has owned and rented shotgun houses to black families, who refer to the area as "The Lakes." William C. Whitaker started buying property in a localized area of eastern Baton Rouge in 1905, building some new shotgun houses. He moved in others and also utilized already existing shotguns in situ. A shotgun house is one-storied, and usually one room wide and three rooms deep, with a front gabled roof and a front porch raised on piers. The shotgun was prevalent in southern Louisiana since the early 1800s as both a plantation and urban dwelling. Most of these shotguns are single, but there are also seven double shotgun houses with either continuous or separate porches. There are also twenty L-shaped houses similar in construction to the shotguns. Still owned by the Whitaker family, this unusual concentration of 136 shotgun and L-shaped houses provides a streetscape of typical, low-income urban dwellings and is representative of Southern vernacular architecture.
Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: FN-49
Survey number: HABS LA-1138
Building/structure dates: 19q1 Initial Construction