c. 1700 – 1860
The French colonial style was found mostly in the eastern United states, especially along the major waterways where the French settled and opened outposts and settlements. This French building tradition died out in the US in the 1830’s with the exception of New Orleans where the building style lasted until the 1860s. Unlike other building traditions, the French Colonial styles often had few interior hallways, and instead relied on exterior staircases and doors as well as rooms that opened into each other. This was often referred to as “shotgun” style since a person could, in theory, open all of the doors of the home and shoot a gun from the front of the home and the bullet would go straight out of the back door with no damage.
In the urban environment, a small single story cottage was built with a steeply pitched side-gabled roof and tall, narrow paired doors and windows. The more rural version of the French Colonial was built slightly larger with a hipped roof from which slender wooden columns extended to brace large porches and sat on a raised masonry foundation. Both types were usually made of stucco walls with little exterior decoration, with the exception of the intricate wrought iron found on some New Orleans French Colonial structures.