Franklin Court

Designed by the architectural firm Venturi and Rauch (now known as Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates), Franklin Court includes an outdoor museum and memorial to Benjamin Franklin sited in Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park.

Background

The complex was constructed on the site of Franklin’s home and includes a 30,000-square-foot underground museum, topped by two "ghost houses" approximating full-scale representations of Franklin’s house and adjacent print shop, which had been demolished in 1812. The original Venturi and Rauch project, commissioned by the National Park Service and completed in 1976 in anticipation of nationwide Bicentennial celebrations, also involved the reconstruction of five adjacent period houses that once faced Market Street, undertaken by John Milner and Associates.

Plan for Franklin Court, Philadelphia, PA, 1973. Image courtesy The Cultural Landscape Foundation.

The entry to the memorial is through a passageway beneath the “ghost” structures, offering a sense of discovery and heightened drama, both physically and temporally. The inner court’s landscape design recalls an eighteenth-century garden, with as much attention given to the design for the museum entrance from the court. As Denise Scott Brown, one of the site’s designers, states, “The ramp felt like a Colonial road, possibly descending to the Delaware.” Viewing ports in situ allow visitors to see the few archaeological remains of the house unearthed during earlier research. Quotes from Franklin's letters to his wife during the house's construction are incised in the paving.

The design of this public space built upon the Greenway plan for Society Hill developed by Philadelphia planner and educator Edmund Bacon a decade earlier. Working with the Philadelphia Planning Commission, Bacon leveraged urban renewal funds to demolish dilapidated wharf buildings and warehouses and rehabilitate the cornerstone of Philadelphia’s Society Hill: its Colonial roots. The design for Franklin Court takes advantage of Bacon’s work to revive the neighborhood by seamlessly integrating with his system of pedestrian greenways a route that extends across the site between Market and Chestnut Streets and engages the entrance to the museum. This seamless integration encourages freedom and movement for all and provides a literal reflection of the democratic ideals presented at Independence Mall. As Maurice Harteveld writes, “new public spaces would symbolize civic society as, one, dominantly present since The Enlightenment and, two, underlying the existence of the United States of America.”

Since its completion, the project has been recognized with several awards from the American Institute of Architects, including the 1977 National Honor Award, and, in 1984, the Presidential Design and Federal Design Achievement Awards. Today, Franklin Court is one of the most visited attractions in Independence Park; as in Franklin's day, the space serves as a quiet oasis in the midst of a bustling commercial area. In a larger context, Franklin Court and Welcome Park in Philadelphia (also designed by Venturi Scott Brown in 1982) are unique interpretive designs that inspired a generation of historic preservation and design professionals. The pair of pioneering Postmodernist designs not only reclaimed urban spaces while avoiding pastiche and nostalgia, they also transformed them into public plazas that served residents and tourists alike.