Two open frames of square steel tubing in Franklin Court trace the shapes of buildings that no longer exist: Benjamin Franklin's house, where he died in 1790, and the print shop he built for his grandson. Designed by the Philadelphia firm of Venturi and Rauch with Denise Scott Brown, and opened on 20 April 1976 for the Bicentennial, these ghost structures were a deliberate choice not to rebuild. Archaeologists had found the outline and cellar features of the house, but the evidence was too incomplete for a faithful reconstruction, so in 1972 the decision was made to show only its form, drawn to dimensions recorded in Franklin's property insurance. The larger frame rises 50 feet to the peak of its roof.
Franklin had the master carpenter Robert Smith build the house in the middle of the block in the 1760s, then left for London while his wife Deborah managed the work from his letters. She lived in it with their daughter Sally and her family until her death in 1774, so the couple never lived there together. After his final return in 1785, Franklin added a wing with a large dining room, a library and bedrooms, a print shop and type foundry for his grandson Benjamin Franklin Bache, and three rental houses on Market Street.
In 1812 the Bache heirs judged the land too valuable to keep the house and tore it down for rental buildings on a narrow new lane, Orianna Street, soon crowded with shops. The National Park Service began buying the lots in 1950 and excavated in the 1950s and 1960s. What survives is the arched carriageway and, seen through viewing hoods in the courtyard, part of the cellar kitchen, several foundation walls and a privy pit, where the paving marks out the rooms.
Getting there
39.9496, -75.1466
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