Creole cottage

Creole cottage is a term loosely used to refer to a type of vernacular architecture indigenous to the Gulf Coast of the United States. Within this building type comes a series of variations. The style was a dominant house type along the central Gulf Coast from about 1790 to 1840 in the former settlements of French Louisiana in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. The style is popularly thought to have evolved from French and Spanish colonial house-forms, although the true origins are unclear.

Creole architecture in Louisiana is documented by numerous listings in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.

The "Creole cottage" type of house was common along the Gulf Coast and associated rivers in the 19th century with a few scattered examples found as far west as Houston, Texas, and as far east as northern Florida, although the majority of structures are found in southern Louisiana eastward to Mobile, Alabama. In Kentucky, a few scattered cottages still stand in the state's far western Jackson Purchase region, where they continued to be built into the early twentieth century.

Two features of this style of house are thought to be influences from other places in France's former colonial empire. The full front porch is believed to originate from the Caribbean islands, while the high gabled roof, the ridge of which is parallel to the street, accommodating the porch as well as the mass of the house, is thought to be of French Canadian origin. In the earlier or more fundamental examples one or two main rooms may open directly onto the porch. They often feature an interior chimney that pierces the ridge line of the roof, with back-to-back fireplaces serving two rooms. Two common secondary characteristics of this style are a raised basement and the frequent situating of the front of the buildings at the property line.

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