City Council approves funding for TCA Shotgun House Project

The Winston-Salem City Council has approved a resolution that will contribute $70,000 to Triad Cultural Arts’ Shotgun House Project.  In the heart of Happy Hill, Winston-Salem’s first planned African American community, stands two shotgun houses.  They are symbols of what life was like in the early 20th century. Around 1920, many shotgun houses began to pop up throughout communities in the South. Relatively inexpensive to construct, a shotgun house is rectangular, one room wide and up to three rooms deep, with a front porch. This architectural style originated from Yorubaland (West Africa) via Haiti to the American South. The word shotgun itself is derived from the Yoruba word “to-gun.”  In Yoruba, this word means ‘place of assembly’ or where people gather. Following the Civil War, these dwellings became a symbol of Black American freedom. In 2017 Triad Cultural Arts, Inc. (TCA), a nonprofit, community-based, multi-disciplinary cultural arts organization, and the Happy Hill Neighborhood Association, launched the Shotgun House Project to preserve two shotgun houses that are still intact in the 700 block of Humphreys Street. After trying to acquire the shotgun houses for seven years, in 2022 the City of Winston-Salem sold the two homes to the organization for $1. ...