The Coffin Shop, also known as the Kring Carpenter Shop, is a historic commercial building in Gainesville,

Sumter County, Alabama Sumter County is a county located in the west central portion of Alabama."ACES Winston County Office" (links/history), Alabama Cooperative Extension System (ACES), 2007, webpageACES-Sumter At the 2020 census, the population was 12,345. Its co ...

. The one-story wood-frame structure was built by Edward N. Kring between 1860 and 1870 as an auxiliary space to his carpenter shop, which originally stood next door. It is a simple gable-fronted structure, with a shotgun plan interior. The exterior features a

clapboard Clapboard (), also called bevel siding, lap siding, and weatherboard, with regional variation in the definition of those terms, is wooden siding of a building in the form of horizontal boards, often overlapping. ''Clapboard'', in modern Am ...

-sided front, with a scalloped

bargeboard A bargeboard or rake fascia is a board fastened to each projecting gable of a roof to give it strength and protection, and to conceal the otherwise exposed end grain of the horizontal timbers or purlins of the roof. The word ''bargeboard'' is pr ...

trim on the gable. The other external walls are covered in

board and batten A batten is most commonly a strip of solid material, historically wood but can also be of plastic, metal, or fiberglass. Battens are variously used in construction, sailing, and other fields. In the lighting industry, battens refer to linea ...

siding. ''See also:'' It was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

on October 29, 1985.

References

National Register of Historic Places in Sumter County, Alabama Shotgun architecture Commercial buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Alabama Coffins Death in Alabama Gainesville, Alabama {{SumterCountyAL-NRHP-stub