So long and narrow you can fire a shotgun from front to back and have the shot pass through every room, "shotgun" houses like these in Germantown are believed to have originated in New Orleans.

So many German-speaking immigrants came to Louisville during the middle years of the 19th century that the city of those days might have had a bit of the feeling of Munich or Bonn. Seeking freedom in America and relief from political upheaval in the Fatherland, they followed earlier migrants who'd come down the Ohio from Pennsylvania and Virginia, built large Catholic churches, and settled around them in the neighborhoods that became known as modern-day Butchertown and Phoenix Hill.

St. Therese Catholic Church, a Germantown landmark, is on the National Register of Historic Places.

By the time of the Civil War, the latest wave of immigrants moved into rows of small, trim frame houses on a neat grid of streets in a section south of Broadway along Goss Avenue and Beargrass Creek, turning what had been rolling dairy farmland into the neighborhoods we now call Germantown and Schnitzelburg.

This is one the neighborhoods where the "shotgun" house is commonplace -- a frane dwelling so long and narrow that all the rooms lie in a row from front to back so that, in theory, if you fired a shotgun in the living room, the shot would pass through every room of the house on its way out

Hauck's Market is another Germantown gathering place of long standing.

the back. A long-standing theory holds that this design evolved as a way to minimize an old tax that was based on the front footage of each residential lot, but there's no evidence that this is true. Rather, the "shotgun" seems to have spread up the rivers from New Orleans, where it may reflect an ancient African design.

Be that as it may, you'll find "shotguns" by the score (and their offshoot, the "camelback," with a partial second story only in the rear), in Germantown as well as in such city neighborhoods as Butchertown, Phoenix Hill and Portland.

One of Louisville's most stable and traditional blue-collar neighborhoods, Germantown retains a bit of German character to this day, and it shows not only in the thriving parishes of St. Therese and St. Elizabeth but also in the neighborhood's remarkable collection of small, family-run beer bars

Flabby's, originally called Flabby Devine's, is just one of dozens of neighborhood taverns.

that seem to inhabit almost every corner, each with its own band of loyal partisans.

Another of the neighborhood's continuing German-style traditions is a serious commitment to tidiness -- although it's by no means an affluent part of town, you'll rarely see a dilapidated house in Germantown, and the custom of sweeping one's front sidewalk every evening is still faithfully observed. And of course there's the annual World Championship Dainty Contest on the street in front of Hauck's Market every July, a traditional sport that involves batting a carved, pointed length of broomstick for distance.

Story and photos by Robin Garr