Franklin Elementary School (Franklin Center)

Franklin Elementary opened in 1898, a time when the area was experiencing population growth that corresponded with the expansion of businesses connected to the local railroad yard and the growth of a smelting business that brought hundreds of jobs to the once-independent town of Argentine. However, a few years after the four-room school opened, the vast smelting business closed in 1901 and the flood of 1903 shifted the town's fortunes. The community continued to grow in response to the expansion of nearby Kansas City, and in 1910, Argentine was annexed by Kansas City, Kansas. The school became part of the Kansas City school system and operated for decades. Another devastating flood in 1951 led to a series of events that eventually resulted in the school's closing in 1972. By the late 1970s, the school transitioned into a community center, which remained its function until 2009. A new plan to re-open the building as a community center was initiated in 2014, and the process of funding and supporting the renovation project of this historic building to create a community center continues thanks to local support.

The four-room Franklin Elementary School opened in 1898 and functioned as part of the Argentine school system before Kansas City, Kansas, annexed the town in 1910. The school serves as a monument of Argentine's years of commercial and population growth, which occurred around the turn of the twentieth century. 

Initially known as Silver City upon its founding in 1880, the town changed its name to Argentine in 1881. Its economy grew substantially during the 1880s, primarily because of the two industries: Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe (ATSF) Railroad and the Kansas City Consolidated Smelting and Refining Company. The railroad came in 1875, a few years before the platting of Silver City, and by 1890 employed 500 people. With the railroad in place, W. N. Ewing chose to open in 1881 a smelting business in town. By 1898, the Argentine smelting business yielded one-twelfth of all the gold, one-eighth of the silver, and one-fifth of the lead produced in the United States. The railroad and smelting business combined to help the town's population increase, resulting in a need for services, including schools. 

The local school attended by children during the 1880s and 1890s proved too small as the twentieth century approached. Thus, the Argentine Board of Education developed plans to build a new, larger school, which opened in autumn 1898. Citizens selected the name by paying five cents to vote among four possibilities: Greeley, Irving, Whittier, or Franklin. The Franklin name received the most votes, and the money collected went towards purchasing a flag for the school. Franklin, a four-room school, supported four teachers who taught children in grades one through eight.

The school opening reflected the city's continued growth, but the smelting business closed in 1901, and a significant flood ravaged the town in 1903, both of which led to economic decline. The founding of the Kansas City Structural Steel Company helped slow the economic downturn. Still, the city desired much bigger help by seeking annexation with Kansas City, Kansas, which came to fruition in 1910. Franklin School's absorption into the Kansas City, Kansas school system in 1910 included an addition consisting of six additional classrooms. 

The town merger occurred in conjunction with a significant demographic shift. Similar to the meatpacking plants of Kansas City, the track laborers in former Argentine transitioned from mainly Eastern Europeans to Mexicans. In 1910, Mexicans comprised fifty-five perfect of track laborers, but by the 1920s, the number rose to more than ninety percent. Nevertheless, segregation policies allowed Franklin School demographics to remain essentially unchanged during that same period. Before the town constructed a school specifically for Mexican Children in 1924 (to accommodate the aforementioned influx of Mexican workers), Mexican children had been restricted to basement classrooms at two other local schools while African American students attended a separate school of their own. 

Another destructive flood occurred in the former Argentine in 1951, nearly ruining the area. The U.S. Corps Engineers established its office at Franklin School during the event. The former town suffered greatly, and the subsequent urban renewal did little to rejuvenate the community. For instance, the construction of the 18th Street Expressway divided the community, isolating east Argentine from the remainder of the community. As a result, Franklin School's enrollment steadily declined, finally closing in after the 1971 - 1972 school year. 

Citizens and grassroots organizations held off plans by the school board to sell the property in 1978 with hopes of turning Franklin into a multi-purpose center, which would include a child care center, Spanish-speaking offices, and adult programs, among many other services. In 1979, the School Board sold the building at a significantly reduced price to the community groups, who opened Franklin Center Inc., a non-profit corporation for social services in 1979. The building was again vacant in 2009 but plans to renovate it emerged in 2011. Still, for years, vandalism and theft put the health of the building in danger. Finally, in 2014, the Franklin Center, Inc. received a $250k matching grant through a partnership with Youthfront towards launching a $2.5 million effort to renovate and reopen the doors of the Franklin Center. Other grants followed, but as of 2022, funds are still necessary to complete the project. 

While its current existence remains in flux, it survives as a reminder of the community's early history as the town of Argentine (and before that, Silver City). Typical of numerous nineteenth-century cities, a railroad coming into town bolstered the town's growth. For Argentine, the railroad inspired an investor to open a smelting business, and the success of that operation concurrent with the railroad's prosperity led to Argentine's population growth. The school reflects Argentine's industrial and population expansion as the town needed to build a school to handle the increased number of children. The building ultimately stands as a monument to Argentine's peak growth, as economic downturn arrived within a decade of its opening, leading Argentine to become absorbed by Kansas City, Kansas. 

Booth, Amber. "Registration Form: Franklin Elementary School." National Register of Historic Places. nps.gov. 2013. https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/7a1eb128-8235-4fb9-86c8-ffa2721a7cd3.

"History." Franklin Center. Accessed March 20, 2022. https://franklincenterkc.org/?page_id=127. 

Kansas City Public Library. "Argentine." The Pendergast Years: Kansas City in the Jazz Age & Great Depression. pendergaskc.org. Accessed March 20, 2022. https://pendergastkc.org/local-subjects/argentine.