Benjamin Franklin Museum

Benjamin Franklin lived at the property he called “my own house” on Market Street for much of his adult life, though the house was demolished in 1812 — less than 25 years after his death. Franklin Court, the site today, takes an architectural approach designed by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown and opened in 1976 for the Bicentennial: steel “ghost structures” in the courtyard trace the outlines of Franklin’s house and print shop without attempting to recreate buildings for which the exact appearance is unknown, a decision that has been both praised as intellectually honest and criticized as emotionally unsatisfying.

Below the courtyard, the Benjamin Franklin Museum opened in 2013 as a complete renovation of an earlier facility on the same site. The museum covers Franklin’s full career — the self-taught printer who published the Pennsylvania Gazette and Poor Richard’s Almanack, the scientist whose kite experiment in a thunderstorm (probably conducted nearby, though the exact location is disputed) established the electrical nature of lightning, the inventor of the lightning rod, bifocals, and the Franklin stove, the colonial agent in London, the diplomat who secured the French alliance that won the Revolutionary War, and the elder statesman who presided over the Constitutional Convention at age 81.

The museum’s collection includes Franklin’s writing desk, original editions of his publications, scientific instruments, and letters. Franklin is buried nearby at Christ Church Burial Ground, and his grave — visible through an iron fence at Fifth and Arch Streets — is one of the most visited sites in the city.