What Is a Camelback Shotgun House?

A shotgun becomes a camelback when a second story rises over the rear portion while the front retains the lower shotgun form.

That relationship matters more than the exact number of rooms, windows or bedrooms. A camelback is therefore not simply another name for a two-story shotgun. It is a specific variation of the broader shotgun house form in which additional space is concentrated above the rear rooms.

City of New Orleans architectural guidance describes camelbacks as single or double shotguns with a second story at the rear. Historic National Register documentation uses the same basic classification and notes that the upper level often provided additional bedroom space. The City of New Orleans HDLC guidelines describe the building-type relationship in the same way.

A camelback keeps the long shotgun arrangement on the lower level but adds an upper floor over only the rear section of the house.

The exact interior layout varies considerably from property to property. The ground floor may retain a traditional front-to-rear sequence of rooms, or it may have been opened and reorganized during later renovations. A staircase then connects the lower level to the rooms in the raised rear section.

Historic National Register documentation for New Orleans describes camelback upper floors that contained one or two bedrooms, but that is not a universal room count. The National Park Service documentation supports the broader classification without making a fixed room count part of the definition.

Yes. A camelback can be built on either a single-shotgun or double-shotgun base because camelback describes the rear second story rather than the number of shotgun units.

This is one of the most important distinctions in the shotgun-house taxonomy. A single camelback starts with one narrow shotgun dwelling and adds a second story toward the rear. A double camelback starts with two side-by-side shotgun units and adds upper space over the rear portion of that wider building.

The City of New Orleans HDLC guidelines explicitly describe the camelback as a variation that can apply to both singles and doubles.

A house can therefore correctly be described as both a camelback and a single shotgun house. Likewise, a property can be both a camelback and a double shotgun plan because those labels describe different attributes of the building.

No. A camelback concentrates its second story at the rear, while a full two-story house continues the upper level across substantially more of the building.

That difference is important enough that historic New Orleans documentation treats camelbacks and full two-story single or double houses as separate building types. The Parkview Historic District's National Register documentation, for example, lists camelbacks separately from two-story singles and two-story doubles. The camelback is specifically identified by the second floor located over the rear rooms.

Calling every camelback a “two-story shotgun” is therefore too broad. A better description is a shotgun with a rear second story or a shotgun with a two-story rear portion.

The camelback gets its name from the raised rear portion of the house, which creates a hump-like profile when viewed from the side. The name is visual.

64 Parishes describes the camelback as a shotgun with a second story toward the rear that resembles a hump on the back of the building.

That also explains why the form is easiest to understand from the side. From directly in front, a camelback may still read primarily as a lower shotgun house. Move farther along the side of the property and the taller rear portion becomes much more obvious.

This naming question should not be confused with the separate debate over why shotgun houses themselves are called “shotguns.” The word camelback comes from this subtype's distinctive rear profile.

A camelback can usually be recognized by a shotgun-shaped lower building with a taller second-story section rising toward the rear.

No. Some camelbacks were created by adding a second story to an existing shotgun, while others were constructed with the rear upper story from the beginning.

This distinction is especially useful when looking at older New Orleans properties. City architectural guidance explains that the form developed in part through vertical additions that increased living space. Historic National Register documentation also notes that some camelbacks resulted from additions while many others were built as complete camelbacks from the start.

In other words: camelback describes the resulting building form, not necessarily the order in which it was built.

One property may have begun life as a one-story shotgun before owners later added rooms above the back. Another may have been designed and constructed as a camelback from day one. There are also historical examples where separate rear structures or dependencies influenced how the resulting building developed.

The exterior form alone cannot always tell you which construction history applies to a specific property.

Planning a new rear upper story is a different question from identifying an existing form. The shotgun-house remodel guide explains how to test zoning, structure, stairs, systems, HDLC review and a separate addition budget before treating a proposed camelback as feasible.

Camelbacks became particularly common during New Orleans' late-19th- and early-20th-century growth, although shotgun houses themselves predate that period.

Research published by the Preservation Resource Center notes that the term “camelback” appears in an 1885 building contract and that the form was particularly popular from roughly 1880 through 1920.

That timing helps explain why camelbacks appear throughout neighborhoods developed during periods of rapid residential expansion. The form allowed builders and property owners to preserve the basic logic of the shotgun while increasing interior space.

It also produced multiple variations. Some camelbacks began with a narrow single-shotgun base. Others were built over doubles. Some were constructed as complete buildings, while others evolved as older houses were expanded.

Those differences are part of why two New Orleans houses can both be correctly called camelbacks while having very different sizes, floor plans and construction histories.

The camelback layout matters to a buyer because the rear upper floor can change bedroom placement, stair circulation, usable space and the renovation history of the house without changing the lower front shotgun form.

A buyer should first understand what type of camelback they are looking at. Is the lower building a single shotgun or a double? Does the second floor appear to be part of the original construction or a later addition? Where is the staircase? Which rooms are upstairs? How does the second floor connect to the lower living spaces? Has a later renovation opened or rearranged the traditional shotgun rooms below?

Those questions can make two houses with the same architectural label function very differently. An upper level containing private bedrooms, for example, can solve some of the bedroom-circulation issues associated with a traditional room-to-room shotgun floor plan.

But the additional level also introduces stairs, another roof system and a more complicated building history to understand.

The word camelback by itself does not tell you whether the rear addition is properly permitted, structurally sound or original to the building. It also does not establish zoning, legal unit count or current permitted use. Those are property-specific questions.

The broader guide for buyers covers the additional due-diligence issues that matter when moving from architectural identification to evaluating an individual house. The current price evidence adds context when comparing how different configurations are priced and positioned.

A camelback shotgun house is defined by where its second story sits.

The basic relationship is a shotgun house, a lower front section and a rear second story. That camelback configuration can then be applied to different shotgun bases.

A single camelback combines one shotgun unit with a rear second story. A double camelback combines two side-by-side shotgun units with a rear second story. A full two-story house changes the vertical form across substantially more of the building.

The simplest way to understand the taxonomy is this: single and double describe what happens across the width of the shotgun. Camelback describes what happens vertically at the rear.

Once that distinction is clear, the various New Orleans shotgun forms become much easier to identify.