Emlenton
Franklin
Oil City
Tionesta
Titusville
Pleasantville
Meadville
Tidioute
Endeavor
Warren
Sheffield
Bradford
Smethport
Ridgway

Styles

Adam
Greek Revival
Classical Revival
Gothic Revival
Italianate
Second Empire
Stick
Queen Anne
Shingle
Colonial Revival
Neoclassical
Tudor
English Cottage

FRANKLIN

	French Creek at Franklin, Pennsylvania

Franklin exists because of its location on French Creek where the creek flows into the Allegheny River.  More than two centuries ago, both the French and the English would come either south from Lake Erie by way of the French Creek waterway or north from Pittsburgh following  old Indian trails or the Allegheny River.  The imperial and colonial interests of both eighteenth century European powers interacted and clashed along this north-south route in the wilderness of Western Pennsylvania.  Both the French and the English occupied forts in Franklin.  After the French and Indian War and the War of Independence, Franklin began to prosper as a commercial center and the seat of government for Venango County, a very large Pennsylvania County in the early nineteenth century. 

French Creek was Franklin’s most essential natural resource.  The creek provided power, water power, to operate a number of grist mills, saw mills, woolen mills and iron works situated in the 1840's and subsequent decades along its banks.  Dams were constructed in the nineteenth century across French Creek to provide the necessary water pools.  The mills are all gone.  The dams are all gone.  The surviving evidence of this thriving, mid-nineteenth century commercial activity can be seen in Franklin’s Greek Revival residential architecture from the period.  A concentration of examples in the 1200 block of Elk Street, just across from the old public commons, is particularly impressive.  Other vestiges of Greek Revival architecture and the contemporaneous, less stylish National Folk houses of the times can be seen scattered along Franklin’s nineteenth century streets.
 

	One of Franklin's Greek Revival  Homes