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		Mercantile Savings Bank
		The Franklin School

THE FRANKLIN SCHOOL

The Franklin School is located at 13th and K Streets, across the street from Franklin Park . The exterior was renovated and restored in 1991; the interior remains untouched and is now under consideration for restoration or redevelopment, perhaps for educational or cultural use. In 2004, the DC Preservation League named the Franklin School to its "Most Endangered Places for 2004" and noted that "the building is unheated, which has contributed to the deterioration of the interior finishes including plaster and wood trim. The lack of use and maintenance threatens the condition of currently well-preserved paintings on the third floor. The winter of 2002-2003 saw the building used as an emergency hypothermia shelter for the homeless."

Completed in 1869, Franklin School was designed by Adolf Cluss, one of Washington's most influential, progressive, and productive architects. Cluss's ideas on how to build modern multi-room public schools with adequate ventilation and space for students and teachers reflect his advanced social thinking. Cluss had been part of socialist circles in southwestern Germany before leaving Europe for America during the failed 1848 uprising; he remained actively involved for a number of years with similar groups in Washington. He also took ideas that were already being used in other industrial, government, and business buildings and applied them for the benefit of students attending public schools. The Franklin School (for "white" students) and the Charles Sumner School (for "colored" students) (1872) became models for public schools around the country and in Europe, winning awards at exhibitions in Vienna (1872), Philadelphia (1876), and Paris (1878). Washington thus stood at the forefront of the public school movement of the post-Civil War period.

The school was also witness to Alexander Graham Bell's first wireless message. On June 3, 1880, Bell sent a message from the school to a window in a building at 1325 L Street, NW.