Franklin Slept Here

Compared to the aristocratic homes of other U.S. founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin's house at 36 Craven Street in London is downright modest. George Washington inhabited a grand estate at Mount Vernon, Virginia, and Thomas Jefferson built Monticello, an elegant mansion, in the same state. But for 15 years, Franklin was a tenant in a simple four- story Georgian brick row house on a street off the Strand near Trafalgar Square. The house's interior is handsome but spare, reflecting the thrifty nature of the man who popularized the proverb, "A penny saved is a penny earned." On Jan. 17, the 300th anniversary of Franklin's birth, the famed inventor-diplomat's sole surviving home will open to the public.

Franklin arrived in London in 1757 as the Pennsylvania Assembly's agent, and spent five years sharing the house with his widowed landlady, Margaret Stevenson, and her daughter, Polly. He returned from Philadelphia and resumed residence there from 1765 to 1775, to present the Assembly's case for making Pennsylvania a Crown colony. During his residence, the house functioned as a de facto U.S. embassy and the center of the American polymath's intellectual and social activities. There he invented the glass armonica, a musical instrument, [an error occurred while processing this directive] and bifocals. He entertained Enlightenment thinkers in the sitting room and took what he called "air baths," during which he opened the windows and sat naked in the parlor. In 1775 in the same parlor, he even tried to negotiate a compromise with William Pitt the Elder, but when that failed, he fled London under threat of arrest — just as the first shots were fired in Massachusetts.

Time was not kind to the house: it took eight years to repair damage caused by neglect, a fire, shifting foundations and a hole in the roof left by an unexploded World War II German bomb. Today, the structure bears a Grade I listing, Britain's highest designation for historic buildings. A combination of heritage funds, corporate donors and private benefactors paid for the $6 million rehabilitation. "There is not a single level corner in this house," director Márcia Balisciano says. But she points proudly to restored features like the staircase and paneling, now painted its original pale green color, identified through examination of old paint layers. The house has 14 fireplaces, and in the first-floor parlor's, restorers found an opening for a Franklin stove, which is installed away from the wall to radiate heat around a room.

Visitors can take a narrated multimedia tour through the basement and first two floors that Balisciano describes as a "historical experience." "This is not a museum with stuff behind glass and people peering over the red ropes," she says. "We are projecting history right onto the walls," with a sound-and-light show that recaps Franklin's London years. After three centuries, the house in which he spent them has been reinvented. tel: (44-20) 7930 9121; www.benjaminfranklinhouse.org