Architectural Wonders

Dog trot cabins are very similar to log cabins. These houses were first introduced in Arkansas in the first 250 years of early Pioneer life. These differ from log cabins in that they are separate sections with a doorway in the middle. The house really just consists of two rooms. Larger dog trot homes have 4 rooms, with two on each side of the door. The house is symmetrical with a continuous roof over the entire thing. No one is completely sure as to why dog trot cabins came into existence, but there is one theory that the one continuous hallway was a very primitive form of air conditioning. Because the winters brought lots of drafts into the house because of this, cultural geographers do not accept this theory. I am not sure that I agree with this theory either, I just think they built the houses this way because it was simple and easy to reproduce.

In an article by William Ferris, who wrote an article entitled, The Dog Trot: A Regional Home and Its Builder, he explores one specific dog trot home built by the father of Richard Foster in Mississippi. Ferris writes that, “Both the structure of individual buildings and their configuration on Foster’s farm reflects the builder’s plan as he “worked it out in his mind””(4) His work is very specific to the region, more specifically the south. The article comes with a blueprint of the home so it is much easier to imagine what the house really looked like. Now that I have read this article and seen the blueprints of the house, I understand the idea of the air conditioning hallways now. Even in the article, Foster says that, “This is the plan he laid out. Said he put a hall in there so the air would circulate through and make it cool”(6). It is interesting now to read that because it definitely makes the theory true, because at least one person followed that design. He planned the interior furnishings to go with this design. Very much planning was put into his because that is what he loved to do.

Dog trot cabins do not really exist today because if people have kept these homes, then they have probably renovated the house with more rooms, therefore, no longer making it a true dog trot cabin. Upon more research, I found out that the dog trot cabin was a form of Cracker Farmhouses. These were just a style of shelter found in Georgia and Florida, but spread through the south and turning into different forms, like the dog trot house.

Ferris, William. The Dog Trot: A Regional Home and Its Builder . Perspecta, Vol. 17. (1980), pp. 66-73.

This is in response to the Architecture Project.