BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Downtown -- Franklin School (963 13th St NW)

BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Downtown -- Franklin School (963 13th St NW) DC -- Downtown -- Franklin School (963 13th St NW):

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. FRANK_210416_06.JPG: The following pictures are from the page 2021_DC_Franklin DC -- Downtown -- Franklin School (963 13th St NW) (1 photo from 2021)
2. FRANK_200626_08.JPG: From the top floor of this building was sent on June 3, 1880 over a beam of light to 1325 L Street the first wireless telephone message in the history of the world. The apparatus used in sending the message was the photophone invented by Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone. This plaque was placed here by Alexander Graham Bell chapter Telephone Pioneers of America March 3, 1947 the centennial of Dr. Bell's birth. -- Photophone From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The photophone (later given the alternate name radiophone) is a telecommunications device that allowed for the transmission of speech on a beam of light. It was invented jointly by Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant Charles Sumner Tainter on February 19, 1880, at Bell's laboratory at 1325 L Street in Washington, D.C. Both were later to become full associates in the Volta Laboratory Association, created and financed by Bell. On June 3, 1880, Bell's assistant transmitted a wireless voice telephone message from the roof of the Franklin School to the window of Bell's laboratory, some 213 meters (about 700 ft.) away. Bell believed the photophone was his most important invention. Of the 18 patents granted in Bell's name alone, and the 12 he shared with his collaborators, four were for the photophone, which Bell referred to as his "greatest achievement", telling a reporter shortly before his death that the photophone was "the greatest invention [I have] ever made, greater than the telephone". The photophone was a precursor to the fiber-optic communication systems that achieved worldwide popular usage starting in the 1980s. The master patent for the photophone (U.S. Patent 235,199 Apparatus for Signalling and Communicating, called Photophone) was issued in December 1880, many decades before its principles came to have practical applications.
3. FRANK_200613_03.JPG: The following pictures are from the page 2020_DC_Franklin DC -- Downtown -- Franklin School (963 13th St NW) (11 photos from 2020)
4. FRANK_190617_18.JPG: Future Home of Planet Word the museum where language comes to life
5. FRANK_190129_02.JPG: The following pictures are from the page 2019_DC_Franklin DC -- Downtown -- Franklin School (963 13th St NW) (4 photos from 2019)
  From the top floor of this building was sent on June 3, 1880 over a beam of light to 1325 L Street the first wireless telephone message in the history of the world. The apparatus used in sending the message was the photophone invented by Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone. This plaque was placed here by Alexander Graham Bell chapter Telephone Pioneers of America March 3, 1947 the centennial of Dr. Bell's birth. -- Photophone From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The photophone (later given the alternate name radiophone) is a telecommunications device that allowed for the transmission of speech on a beam of light. It was invented jointly by Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant Charles Sumner Tainter on February 19, 1880, at Bell's laboratory at 1325 L Street in Washington, D.C. Both were later to become full associates in the Volta Laboratory Association, created and financed by Bell. On June 3, 1880, Bell's assistant transmitted a wireless voice telephone message from the roof of the Franklin School to the window of Bell's laboratory, some 213 meters (about 700 ft.) away. Bell believed the photophone was his most important invention. Of the 18 patents granted in Bell's name alone, and the 12 he shared with his collaborators, four were for the photophone, which Bell referred to as his "greatest achievement", telling a reporter shortly before his death that the photophone was "the greatest invention [I have] ever made, greater than the telephone". The photophone was a precursor to the fiber-optic communication systems that achieved worldwide popular usage starting in the 1980s. The master patent for the photophone (U.S. Patent 235,199 Apparatus for Signalling and Communicating, called Photophone) was issued in December 1880, many decades before its principles came to have practical applications.
6. FRANK_160218_01.JPG: The following pictures are from the page 2016_DC_Franklin DC -- Downtown -- Franklin School (963 13th St NW) (11 photos from 2016)
7. FRANK_160218_12.JPG: The 1992 date is the date when the exterior of the building was restored. Other dates in the history: * 1977: Broad of Education votes to restore Sumner and Franklin Schools * 1986: Sumner School restored and opened to public. * 1992: Exterior of Franklin School restored. * 1996: The Franklin designated a National Historic Landmark. * 2002-2008: Franklin School used as a homeless shelter. * 2003: City advertises for a tenant for Franklin School. * 2004: DC Preservation League lists Franklin as endangered due to lack of use and maintenance, threatening historic interior. * 2005: City issues Request for Proposal to develop Franklin School. * 2009: City issues another Request for Proposal to develop Franklin School. * 2011: School briefly occupied by protesters associated with the Occupy movement. * 2015: Mayor Muriel Bowser cancels planned conversion of the school to a public facility for art exhibitions, lectures and educational activities by the Institute for Contemporary Expression.
8. FRANK_160218_33.JPG: The 1868 date is the date the building was completed
9. FRANK_160218_40.JPG: You can barely see the pigeon screens
10. FRANK_160218_51.JPG: Moon rising behind the Franklin School Thursday afternoon
11. FRANK_160218_59.JPG: From the top floor of this building was sent on June 3, 1880 over a beam of light to 1325 L Street the first wireless telephone message in the history of the world. The apparatus used in sending the message was the photophone invented by Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone. This plaque was placed here by Alexander Graham Bell chapter Telephone Pioneers of America March 3, 1947 the centennial of Dr. Bell's birth. -- Photophone From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The photophone (later given the alternate name radiophone) is a telecommunications device that allowed for the transmission of speech on a beam of light. It was invented jointly by Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant Charles Sumner Tainter on February 19, 1880, at Bell's laboratory at 1325 L Street in Washington, D.C. Both were later to become full associates in the Volta Laboratory Association, created and financed by Bell. On June 3, 1880, Bell's assistant transmitted a wireless voice telephone message from the roof of the Franklin School to the window of Bell's laboratory, some 213 meters (about 700 ft.) away. Bell believed the photophone was his most important invention. Of the 18 patents granted in Bell's name alone, and the 12 he shared with his collaborators, four were for the photophone, which Bell referred to as his "greatest achievement", telling a reporter shortly before his death that the photophone was "the greatest invention [I have] ever made, greater than the telephone". The photophone was a precursor to the fiber-optic communication systems that achieved worldwide popular usage starting in the 1980s. The master patent for the photophone (U.S. Patent 235,199 Apparatus for Signalling and Communicating, called Photophone) was issued in December 1880, many decades before its principles came to have practical applications.
12. FRANK_090123_03.JPG: The following pictures are from the page 2009_DC_Franklin DC -- Downtown -- Franklin School (963 13th St NW) (16 photos from 2009)
13. FRANK_070422_03.JPG: The following pictures are from the page 2007_DC_Franklin DC -- Downtown -- Franklin School (963 13th St NW) (5 photos from 2007)
14. FRANK_060303_05.JPG: The following pictures are from the page 2006_DC_Franklin DC -- Downtown -- Franklin School (963 13th St NW) (3 photos from 2006)
15. FRANK_060303_13.JPG: The Franklin School picture was taken from Franklin Square. The DC Downtown Heritage Trail sign: This urban oasis exists because President Andrew Jackson needed water. The site of excellent springs (a rare commodity in the early city when everyone was dependent on private wells), this square was purchased by the federal government in 1832 so that it could pipe fresh water to the White House. It was an arrangement that lasted until 1898, well after the city had a piped water supply from above Great Falls on the Potomac River. In July of 1861, as the nation prepared for war, soldiers of the 12th New York Regiment moved in on the square, still a somewhat lightly settled place on the northern edge of the city. Their flimsy barracks were typical of the temporary quarters thrown up all around the city as northern troops poured into the city. President Lincoln frequently passed this way going to or returning from Anderson Cottage, his summer house on the grounds of the Soldiers' Home. His Secretary of State, Edwin M. Stanton, lived on the north side of the square at 1323 K Street, and the president was sometimes seen in his open carriage parked in the street conversing with Stanton. Now and then, the president's eye was drawn to Union troops playing baseball in the square across the street. With the rapid growth of the population after the war, Franklin Square continued to attract the city's elite. Mrs. John Sherman, wife of the Secretary of Treasury in the administration of Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-1881), described her move to a new house in the area as "going into the country." Future president James A. Garfield lived in a house on the northeast corner of 13th and I Streets while serving in the House of Representatives. Franklin School, completed in 1869, stands as the only remaining vestige of this fashionable community. Designed by prominent architect Adolph Cluss, its elegant combination of Gothic, Romanesque Revival, and Second Empire styles is testimony to the pride the city took in its public school system. Its design and the city's educational programs won prizes in Vienna in 1873, in Philadelphia in 1876, and in Paris in 1878. Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone who lived in Washington, transmitted the first wireless message from Franklin School to his nearby laboratory on L Street in 1880. It was an experiment whose potential went unrealized until today's telecommunication revolution.
16. FRANK_050919_10.JPG: The following pictures are from the page 2005_DC_Franklin DC -- Downtown -- Franklin School (963 13th St NW) (5 photos from 2005)
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Wikipedia Description: Franklin School
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Franklin School is a building designed by Adolph Cluss located on Franklin Square at 13th and K Street in Washington, DC. Built in 1869, the structure is currently unoccupied but has been used as a homeless shelter since 2002.

A small plaque on the building describes the building's place in the history of telecommunications, when a beam of light was first used to transmit sound waves using the photophone, invented by Alexander Graham Bell.
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