Ben Franklin’s Frustration
Even this Founding Father had neighbor problems
Current view of Franklin Court, 322 Market Street, Philadelphia. Photo by Jim Murphy, author of Real Philly History, Real Fast.
Not long ago, while researching some information on Ben Franklin, I learned something I’d never known before.
It seems that even Franklin — known for his ability to forge alliances — had difficulty with at least one neighbor. And the disagreement affected the very first home Ben and his wife Deborah Read built in Philadelphia … after living at 13 rental properties during the first 33 years of their marriage.
Ben and Deborah owned a number of lots between Third and Fourth Streeets along Market Street. Charles E. Peterson, the first resident architect at Independence National Historical Park, says their lot extended 308 feet “almost to Chestnut Street.”
Peterson also admits the property had some problems. Among them: the noise and odors of Market Street to the north, and the stench of tanyards along Dock Creek to the south, which ran “next to or through the southwest corner of the property.”
One more drawback …
Edward M. Riley, chief park historian, Independence National Historical Park Project, notes that Orianna Street ran right down the middle of Franklin’s lawn.
But this is where Franklin wanted to build his first house. And he did, about 100 feet north of the southern boundary, and some 200 feet from Market Street. (When my wife and I visited Franklin Court a short time ago and counted out our steps, however, the current house’s location seemed to be much closer to the center of the two streets.)
Construction is believed to have begun in the fall of 1764. Even before the house was started, Peterson says, Franklin began traveling in his role as Postmaster General. Deborah, who had to deal with the problems of home construction by herself, moved in about May of 1765.
Because Ben spent so many years in England and France representing the Colonies, he and Deborah never actually lived in the house together. She died December 19, 1774, before Ben returned to Philadelphia. After seeing the house for the first time on May 5, 1775, Franklin left for France in October of the following year. He didn’t return again until Sept. 14, 1785.
No one knows exactly what the house looked like. That’s why you now see only creative “ghost structures” in Franklin Court designed by Philadelphia architects Robert Venturi, William Rauch, and Denise Scott Brown.
According to park historian Riley, Colonel Robert Carr — who apprenticed under Ben’s grandson Benjamin Franklin Bache at Franklin Court in the 1790s — described the house this way:
“A court, or alley, ten feet wide called ‘Franklin Court,’ extended from Market-street to the rear of the house, which was built with the front towards Chestnut-street, but some time after it was erected, it was discovered that the title to the front of the lot on Chestnut-street was defective; and the Doctor, rather than engage in a litigation, or pay an exorbitant price demanded by the claimant of the lot, abandoned it, and used the Market-street avenue. This fact, I heard Mr. B.F. Bache, his grandson, relate to Mr. Volney, the traveller, who enquired why the Doctor had built his house fronting the South, to which he had not outlet.”
Mr. Volney may not have been the only person who asked that question.
Visitors underwhelmed by the house
Since Franklin felt he had built “a good house …contrived to my mind” and that it was “the Execution of my plan,” he was disappointed that visitors did not seem to be impressed. Peterson says Franklin complained in a letter to Deborah: “you tell me only of a Fault they found with the house, that it was too little, and not a Word of any thing they lik’d in it.”
“Besides what some considered its meager size,” Peterson says, “the house may not have put its best foot forward. It may have been designed to face south to Chestnut Street, although there is no evidence that the Franklins ever attempted to acquire that frontage. Visitors therefore always entered from the north, first coming through a rather narrow passageway.”
Unlike Washington and Jefferson, Peterson says, Franklin “cannot be remembered by a great house.” While the court is open and pleasant-looking today, “it does not completely reflect its evolution on a somewhat inhospitable terrain.”
Interesting Oddities:
Franklin’s friend Samuel Rhoads oversaw construction, with Robert Smith, the most important architect-builder in the Colonies serving as the designer. Yet Franklin was unhappy with the pace of construction, and blamed Smith. He wrote Deborah on May 11, 1765: that he hoped “by this time you are nearly settled in your new House; tho’ when I consider the slowness of Workmen, I rather question whether you will be so before I return.”
When Franklin returned to Philadelphia in 1785, he began enlarging his house. Biographer Walter Isaacson says he planned a three-story wing “designed to meld seamlessly” with the existing house. Besides a long dining room able to seat 24, he built a library that accommodated 4,276 volumes. He also built two new houses, one that became Benjamin Franklin Bache’s printing shop.
Ben’s new home was “an amusement” to him and he included a number of his personal “contrivances.” Among them, Isaacson says: “a trapdoor that opened to the roof, so ‘one may go out and wet the shingles in case of a neighboring fire.’ ”
There was also a small iron grate or trap-door below the hearth that when raised re-kindled the fire; plus doors “lined with green baize for quiet”; and a pulley device in Franklin’s bedroom that could be operated from the bed to lock and unlock the door.
While renovating his old house, Franklin discovered “that a bolt had melted the tip of its old lightning rod while he was in France,” Isaacson says, “ but his house had remained unscathed ‘so that at length the invention had been of some use to the inventor.’ ”
Some Sources
Isaacson, Walter. Ben Franklin: An American Life, New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2003.
Peterson, Charles E. Robert Smith, Architect, Builder, Patriot 1722–1777, Philadelphia: The Athenaeum of Philadelphia, 2000.
Riley, Edward M. “Franklin’s Home,” Historic Philadelphia: From the Founding Until the Early Nineteeth Century, Vol. 43, Part 1, American Philosophical Society, Independence Square, 1953.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Court
https://franklinpapers.org/framedVolumes.jsp
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20089285?seq=48#metadata_info_tab_contents
https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/benjamin-franklin-in-london/
https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/inde/hsr1/notes.htm
https://www.ushistory.org/franklin/info/timeline2.htm