At a 1934 house on Smith Alley, the rusted tin porch cover has been replaced and the home given a fresh coat of blue paint, its front door and windows trimmed in crisp white, making the classic shotgun house new and inviting.
In San Antonio, there are an estimated 700 “shotgun” houses like it. Mostly built in the early half of the 20th century, the homes are slim in size, but big on historic and architectural value — even as they fall into disrepair.
In 2022, City Council voted to fund a program to rehabilitate shotgun houses using $302,000 from the Neighborhood and Housing Services Department.
The Office of Historic Preservation started with three houses for the pilot program. Now two of those properties, both on the West Side, are nearly like new again and ready to provide needed housing.
A third home will get underway later this year, said Shanon Miller, director of the Office of Historic Preservation.
Though none of the hundreds more shotgun houses in need of repair are slated for city-funded rehabilitation, the pilot program provided some valuable lessons, she said.
“The idea behind the shotgun pilot was to really help identify potential barriers and best practices related to reusing these kinds of naturally occurring, affordable tiny homes,” Miller said, including what kinds of material and skills are needed.
“It wasn’t just a rehab like all of the other rehabs that Neighborhood and Housing Services are doing, but it was really kind of trying to apply the other tools and the other resources that we have and then learn from that,” she added.
Learning by doing
Those tools and resources include the Living Heritage Trades Academy, which provides a real-world workshop for skilled trades training, and the city’s Material Innovation Center, a facility set up in 2022 at Port SA to store reusable material salvaged from deconstructed buildings.
In both shotgun houses, the project relied on 13 apprentices from the Trades Academy for window repair, for example.
Apprentice Amanda Roberts enrolled in the Trades Academy after earning a degree in history and trying out several other jobs. As part of her training, Roberts repaired the windows of the Smith Alley home.
She’s now partnering with another apprentice to start her own wood window restoration business, SA Wood Windows.
Roberts said she was “impressed” that the project is taking a house belonging to a man who grew up there, and rather than tearing it down, is turning it into low-income housing.
“It’s helping the community, it’s helping the homeowner, and it’s helping to preserve this piece of history that is pretty significant in our town,” she said.
Free material from the Innovation Center was obtained to offset some of the repair costs. The Innovation Center started collecting material in 2023 after the deconstruction ordinance took effect. This law prohibits mechanical razing of any residential single-family home, multi-unit or accessory structure built before 1945.
“Seeing where that material can go and the impact that it can have on budgets on these projects is an important kind of assessment that we’re going to do once all three of the projects are completed,” Miller said.
The Smith Alley home was built in 1934 and in need of major reconstruction, restored wood windows, an updated kitchen and bathroom and improved energy efficiency. The work began in August and should be completed by next month.
In 2019, OHP commissioned a study examining the preservation of such houses as a strategy for stabilizing long-term homeownership rates, but also to increase affordable rental units and prevent displacement in inner-city neighborhoods.
Tiny historic houses
Shotgun houses are usually less than 1,000 square feet and built before 1960. Though small, simple and inexpensively built often for working-class families, the tiny houses have been hailed for their use of limited space and decoration.
In San Antonio, shotgun houses, cottages and bungalows are considered important for their historic value, if not their place in a community with a high degree of aging housing stock and a lack of affordable housing.
“Many of these structures, shotguns or otherwise, are passed down through generations of families … so it’s important for that reason,” Miller said. Preserving them promotes community stability and the cultural heritage “associated with just protecting the built environment, and the story that tells about our neighborhoods.”
Another property selected for the project and nearly completed is a 664-square-foot house at 1107 Guadalupe St. built in 1950.
Trades Academy students and contractors repaired and replaced exterior siding, restored the original wood windows and redesigned the floorplan.
The house is owned by the nonprofit Esperanza Peace and Justice Center and the Esperanza Community Land Trust, which has been working to preserve historic homes on the West Side. “Especially little homes,” said Graciela Sanchez, director of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center.
“That is the essence of a lot of what’s left of our historic working-class neighborhood that’s been very targeted, I think, by developers, by a community that feels like they’re old and that they’re [not] worth anything,” Sanchez said.
The Guadalupe house will be available for rent later this year for a family that makes less than $25,000 in annual income, she said.
Work on the third house in the OHP program, which has not been selected, is expected to start later this year.
