A Letter to the Architects of the Gulf (opens in new tab)

Reflections from Atlantic Street, Buchanan, Liberia To the Residents of the Tremé, the Central City, and the Mississippi Delta: I am writing to you from a porch in Buchanan, Liberia, that speaks your language. In your country, you call them “shotgun houses.” You value them as the quintessence of Black architecture in the American South—those narrow, wooden structures built one-room wide and many-rooms deep, with doors aligned to let a “shotgun blast” of a breeze pass through in the […] The po...