ARTIFACTS & MEMORY

The Reclaiming of Two Shotgun Homes

The houses on West Main street are surrounded, literally, by gentrification, with the new Trinity Groves on one side and four story apartment buildings advertising views of downtown on the other. The old homes on this hidden street are falling to the same fate as others around it. They are slowly being purchased by developers to be demolished to make way for new multi-family residences. As each structure gets wiped away, so does the visual and narrative history of the neighborhood. 

 From talking with the community Artstillery knew that outside the community, no one had concerned themselves with discovering and recording their narratives. It would be all the harder once the old homes were gone. As part of the process of uncovering hidden narratives in a community Artstillery collects artifacts, images and in the case of Family Dollar, the very homes where some of stories take place. As we prepared to take on Family Dollar in 2020, we discovered that two of the original shotgun homes on West Main St. were to be demolished soon.  Artstillery was moved to act.

      “Y'all are the only people I knew, that come through, to try and save things in this neighborhood. Everybody else come through and they say, 'Well, we can tare it down and rebuild.' I know y'all trying to save things for people. Like a museum, they can come through and see the things that once was there.” 

- Teddy,

On why he's helping Artstillery

save pieces of these old homes.

Teddy Celebrating After Helping Remove Doors on the First Day.

Collecting objects, images, and sounds to help build narratives is one thing, but collecting something as singular as a place called home was much different. Moments upon moments of a family’s lives had bounced off those walls. Children had run down the street and these buildings were a fixed part of their world as they grew up. They guided them home or were a safe haven for play and sometimes dinner. These shotgun houses were made quickly and cheaply, but they had been the vessel for the very valuable stories we hoped to help bring to others. 

Initially Artstillery hoped to perform Family Dollar in the homes, an homage to the people who lived there, but that was not to be. Always ambitious we hoped instead to move the homes and rebuild them. We reached out to friends from the architectural firm Mead & Hunt. They helped us grasp the task at hand and to understand more about the homes. 

Community Activist at Lone Star Baptist Church.

      “Our staff from Mead & Hunt’s Dallas office recently teamed up with their local art-based 501c3, Artstillery to salvage materials from historic 60+ year old shotgun houses, which are planned for demo to make room for urban development. Shotgun houses were popular rectangular style homes that popped up after the Civil War in the 1900s and through the 60s. The design of these houses can be traced to Africa and Haiti, and to the US via New Orleans, Florida, and Texas. Materials salvaged from two shotgun houses will be used to rebuild this style home two blocks away to help preserve the history of the homes and the community.” 

-MEAD & HUNT

Facebook Post

Teaching How to Safely Remove a Window.

Once the task was evaluated, Artstillery settled on salvaging what we could and repurposing the pieces into an artistic interpretation of three shotgun homes in a new location. With the help of volunteers young and old, the team deconstructed the houses, saving the outer boards, windows, doors and facades. Community members from West Main Street helped too, laboring with us to save pieces of their own past. The local church,  Lone Star Baptist Church offered to provide land next to the church for the new structures.The church has been a part of this community for generations. It was originally built on June 14, 1939 to serve this small community. It’s long history made it the perfect location for both the structures and the immersive performance piece to occur. 

As we removed the first boards, and felt the literal weight of history, one community member familiar with the project drove by.  She leaned out the window and yelled “Hey y'all, grab that house number off the building. I grew up seeing that every day.”  This passing comment affirmed that the new structures though built with old wood and glass, would really be built with the memories of the community itself. While they will be the “sets” for the performances of Family Dollar, the structures will remain for a time after the performance occurs. They’ll be a public work of art with statements from the community displayed as plaques along with testimonial videos you can access with your smartphone. We encourage everyone in the Dallas area to visit and learn the stories of this community.

Volunteer Prepares to Remove the Last Boards.