Beautiful 4 acre grounds

Here’s a video giving you a quick tour of the Franklin, MA Town Common:

Plenty of fun events

There are many activities and special events held on the Common every year.

You can lean a lot about the character of the Franklin community (and have fun as well) by attending some of these festivities.

Below is just a partial list of annual happenings at the Town Common in Franklin, Massachusetts; click the photos or the follow the hyperlinks to learn more about each activity:

Concerts on the Common

Fourth of July Festival

Farmers’ Market

Holiday Lighting of Town Common

Click to see homes for sale in Franklin, MA and surrounding communities in Massachusetts.

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An impressive new Museum

It’s fantastic that a town with about 31,000 residents out in the suburban I-495 loop like Franklin, MA can have such a nice facility devoted to showcasing the community’s past.

Friday evening’s opening ceremonies provided town residents with a special first look at the sparkling new interior and all the historical artifacts and memorabilia from Franklin’s past now displayed there.

Here’s a video of the evening’s events with an overview of just some of what you’ll find at the Museum:

Hours of operation

The Museum is free to the public and open throughout the year on the following schedule:

Thursdays, 5PM to 8PM   (closed on days schools close due to snow)
Saturdays, 10AM to 1PM
Sundays, 1PM to 4PM

Another enhancement to Downtown Franklin, Massachusetts

The new Downtown location for the Historical Museum is just one of many recent upgrades to the Downtown area.

Franklin’s Downtown has recently benefited from the major new construction projects, including a new $9.3 million fire station headquarters and $30 million mixed-use Franklin Center Commons.

The area also received streetscape facelifts funded by separate $5 million Federal and $1 million State grants.

The Franklin Downtown Partnership strives hard to help support downtown business and keep the Downtown area on the upswing.

Interesting exhibits

The Museum’s interior is brand new, with finish work contributed by the students at the Tri-County Regional Vocational Technical School in Franklin, MA.  All the display cases and bookshelves were built by Vo Tech students.

Displays include Native American arrowheads and stone implements discovered at archeological sites in Franklin, antique tools from Franklin’s rich industrial-age past and an extensive collection of Civil War artifacts.  There are also many photos and documents detailing everyday life in the Town of Franklin from the 1920s through the 1950s.

The Historical Museum in Franklin, Massachusetts is well worth a visit!

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Visit well worth the time

You can easily spend a half an hour or more walking through the grounds, reading ancient grave makers and enjoying the peace and solitude that exists right in the heart of Franklin. A visit will be well worth your time.

Famous Franklin families

Several important and influential Franklin families have plots in this cemetery, including:

Oliver Dean – founder of Dean College.

The Fletcher family– a wealthy family of Franklin whose descendants included Austin Barclay Fletcher, whose testamentary bequests helped found the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

The Ray family – a very important family in Franklin’s history.  Various Ray family members gave the funds to build the Franklin Public Library, the old central fire station (since torn down and replaced with a new structure), the Gazebo at the Town Commons and also left their homes to Dean College.  The impressive Ray Mansion serves as the admissions office at Dean.

Poignant reminders of man’s mortality

There are 100s of graves of less wealthy Franklin families at the Union Street Cemetery.  I didn’t spend the time needed to find the oldest markers, but many grave stones date back to the early and mid 1800s.

One poignant group of graves date from 1836 to 1842 and belong to three young children of the Allen family.  These children died at the tragically young ages of 9 months, 11 days and 1 day, respectively.  These graves certainly make one value the benefits of modern childhood medicine.

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Franklin treasure since 1918

The focal point of the summertime Concerts on the Franklin Common and several cherished annual holiday events including the July Fourth Celebration and the Holiday Lighting of the Common, the gazebo has suffered substantial deterioration over the years since it was built in 1918.

Poorly designed roof

Much of the damage stemmed from an inexplicably flawed roof design. 

As outlined in an article the Milford Daily News originally published back in February, the circular roof of the gazebo was built with a too narrow radius.  This left the brick and mortar base exposed to the elements.

Repeated cycles of freezing and thawing of winter ice and snow have eaten away at the gazebo base.  Clay roof tiles have also broken, allowing the underlying wood structure to rot.

More photos of the work to date

Quarter million dollar job

Cost estimates back in February for making the roof larger and doing the other improvements to the gazebo totaled approximately $250,000.  The expense is well worth it as it will help assure many future generations get to enjoy this wonderful Franklin, MA landmark!

Click here learn more about Franklin, Massachusetts.

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The Common is also adjacent to Franklin’s prestigious Benjamin Franklin Classical Charter Public School and the historic Hayward Manor (the latter is located at 195 Main Street in Franklin, MA).

The Franklin Town Common features a brick gazebo bandstand dating back to 1917 (a gift of the Hayward family) . . .

several war memorials  . . .

and pleasant walkways that crisscross the grounds.

Like many town commons in New England, it’s a nice spot for a picnic.  But the Town Common in Franklin, MA serves a central role in the life of the Franklin, MA community well beyond providing a shady spot to rest and to have an outdoor lunch. 

The Franklin Town Common is the site of many fairs, festivals and public events that unite the town and contribute to Franklin’s unique identity.  It’s the focal point of much of what makes Franklin Franklin!

Summer Concerts on the Common

July 4th Celebration

Farmer’s Market

Holiday Lighting of the Common

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The $6.2 million, 16,000 square foot building is very spacious and pleasant.  It features a 2,000+ square foot common room, greenhouse/solarium, computer lab, compact gym, and café.

The Center offers services for seniors and the disabled including recreational activities, health and wellness programs, information and referral services, and access to affordable meals and transportation.  The Senior Center in Franklin, MA seeks to foster the physical independence, social engagement and economic well-being of older and disabled Franklin residents.

Services are available to all Franklin resident 60 years or older and to the disabled.

Franklin Senior Center
10 Daniel McCahill Street
Franklin, MA 02038
508-520-4945
http://franklinma.virtualtownhall.net/Pages/FranklinMA_Senior/index

Click here to learn about the Franklin Fire Headquarters, another recently-constructed building owned by Franklin, MA.

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Called the Franklin Fire Headquarters, the impressive 22,000-square-foot facility replaced the old, outmoded and crumbling Headquarters which was built in 1922.  The new Fire Headquarters occupies the site of the former Headquarters on West Central Street in Franklin, MA.  The gleaming new station certainly improves the look and feel of the downtown area.

Beyond the improved aesthetics, town officials have stressed that the new building’s larger vehicle bays were needed to accommodate today’s larger fire trucks and that the state-of-the-art dispatch system will improve efficiency.

The new Fire Headquarters includes a modern town emergency command center, decontamination areas for emergencies involving hazardous materials, and a new walk-in medical services room.  Better working conditions for fire department staff are apparent in the new separate male and female showers and individual bedrooms (which replace the single shower and same-sex dormitory of the old facility).

Click here to see the Franklin Historical Museum, another exciting upgrade to the Franklin, MA downtown area!

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The Museum has taken over a graceful antique wooden structure at 80 West Central Street in Franklin, MA.

The building formerly was the site of the Franklin Senior Center (which itself recently moved to a beautiful new building in Franklin).

The relocation of the Museum to the old senior center site has helped further improve the Franklin downtown area.  The Museum will be a prime tourist attraction and also occasioned the renovation of the structure which will be its home.

Back in December 2007, the Franklin Town Council approved $210,000 for improvements to get the building ready house the Museum.

New columns, front steps and modern windows were installed.   Exterior work was completed in November 2008.

The Franklin Historical Museum is slated to reopen in Spring 2009.  Interior remodeling will be completed and displays set up.

The Museum exhibits will include stone arrowheads unearthed at Franklin’s Beaver Pond, antique uniforms and straw hats, machinery and other articles from Franklin’s industrial past, and lots of photos!

A $20,000 state grant helped defray the cost of the “Hats Off to Franklin” statue that now graces the front of the Franklin Historical Museum.

The statue’s straw hat was chosen to represent town’s industrial heritage as a center of US of straw hat manufacturing.

(I have read somwhere that the all the straw hats used in the movie Gone with the Wind were made in Franklin, MA.)

Click here to read about the Franklin Public Library, a very important piece of Franklin, MA’s history.

Click here to learn more about efforts to upgrade and beautify Downtown Franklin, MA.

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