The Franklin Apartments (Benjamin Franklin Hotel)

Named in honor of founding father Benjamin Franklin, the Franklin Apartments was built in 1925 and was the last and most luxurious of the grand hotels constructed in Philadelphia before the Great Depression. It is considered one of the best works of noted local architect Horace Trumbauer, who designed many other prominent buildings in the city including the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Parkway Central Library. He also designed several manor houses for wealthy residents and received commissions for buildings in a number of other states. The hotel was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 and converted into apartments in 1990. It was later renovated between 2011-2016.

The building stands on the location of a previous hotel, the Continental Hotel, which was built from 1857 to 1860. Six-stories tall, it offered 700 rooms and was designed in the Italianate style. The Continental was notable for other reasons as well. It was one of the first buildings in the country to feature elevators and hosted several prominent figures of the period including Ulysses S. Grant, Andrew Johnson, Charles Dickens, King Edward VII of England, and president-elect Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln stopped in the city on his way to his inauguration in Washington D.C. and gave a speech from a balcony. The lantern that was located above Lincoln as he addressed the crowd hangs in the north entrance balcony of the Franklin Apartments (it is believed that Trumbauer placed this balcony in the same position where the balcony of the Continental was located).

By 1920, the Continental was considered too old and it was decided that a new hotel should be built in its place. It was erected by Frank A. Dudley, who operated the upscale United Hotels of America chain. Its completion also coincided with the nation's sesquicentennial. The building features a grand two-story lobby with a highly decorative painted ceiling and columns, a grand ballroom featured in the movie The Silver Lining's Playbook, and a dining room with a vaulted ceiling. In 1947, the hotel refused to let a young Jackie Robinson stay at the hotel, which had a whites-only policy. As a result, the Los Angeles Dodgers stayed at the Warwick Hotel instead and made it their permanent home when they came to Philadelphia.

The hotel stopped operating in 1986 and its conversion into an apartment building was finished in 1990. By 1911, the state of the lobby had deteriorated (gold leaf kept falling down and reliefs were painted over in blue and yellow). It became a public place as well as pedestrians used it as a shortcut or to just relax. The ground floor was also divided into commercial and medical office space. Maintenance and security issues were constant concerns. This situation changed when developers bought the building in 2011. It reopened in 2016.

Bixler, Michael. "Trumbauer's Legendary Ben Franklin Hotel Reborn." Hidden City. August 10, 2016. https://hiddencityphila.org/2016/08/trumbauers-legendary-ben-franklin-hotel-reborn.

Kostelni, Natalie. "Ben Franklin House gets $13 million renovation." Philadelphia Business Journal. April 9, 2014. Retrieved from the Web Archive on December 21, 2022. https://web.archive.org/web/20140413094248/http://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/blog/real-estate/2014/04/korman-communities-spends-big-on-renovating-the.html.

Patten, Zach. "Echoes of an Extravagant Past: The Ben Franklin House's Continental History." June 25, 2013. https://philly.curbed.com/2013/6/25/10228052/echoes-of-an-extravagant-past-the-ben-franklin-houses-continental.

Thomas, George E. "Benjamin Franklin Hotel." National Park Service - National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form.

March 2, 1982. https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_PA/82003808.pdf.