Franklin College Historic District Window Treatment in Franklin, IN

Local Window Treatment Experience in Franklin College Historic District

Franklin College campus buildings, 1834 onward

The district covers 19 contributing resources over roughly 207 acres, which makes it the largest of Franklin's three National Register districts by area and the smallest by count. The named buildings include Old Main, made up of Stott, Bailey and Chandler Halls, plus Shirk Hall, Richardson Chapel, the B.F. Hamilton Library, Barnes Science Hall and the Eli Lilly Campus Center. Architecturally it's collegiate institutional work of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Nearly two centuries of campus building means the oldest buildings and the newest sit inside one boundary with almost nothing in common at the window.

There are no private houses inside the boundary, which is worth repeating because Franklin addresses near the college get assumed into the district all the time. East Monroe Street, South Forsythe Street, Grizzly Drive, Park Avenue and Branigin Boulevard bound it. If your house is on the far side of one of those streets, you're outside the listing and nothing in it applies to you. What does apply is Franklin's general pattern: 10.6 percent of the city's housing predates 1940, or 1,084 units, and older houses near the campus are the kind that fall into that tenth. We measure rather than assume.

Long identical runs, deep reveals, and openings that have moved

Institutional buildings don't have window schedules like houses do. Where a Franklin two story carries 16 to 22 openings across a dozen different sizes, a corridor in Old Main can carry 20 openings of one size in a straight run. That changes what matters. A single mis measure repeats 20 times, and any variation in fabric across the run reads instantly, because the openings sit side by side in your eyeline. We measure every opening in a run rather than measuring one and multiplying, because a nineteenth century masonry building will not give you 20 identical numbers.

The older buildings, Old Main and Richardson Chapel among them, carry arched institutional openings and deep masonry reveals. Deep reveals are good news for an inside mount and bad news for assumptions, since reveal depth changes with the wall. Assume out of square in the nineteenth century buildings and run a diagonal check. Height is the other constraint: Lutron publishes larger light gaps on shades over 120 inches tall than the 3/4 inch per side it lists on Roller 20/64, and institutional openings clear that height regularly. Campus buildings face internal quadrangles and the bounding streets, so exposure changes wall by wall.

What we specify on the Franklin College campus and the streets around it

Campus work and rental work near campus want different things, and the money works differently too. On campus the questions are repeatability across a run and how a room performs when it's meant to be dark. In the rental housing outside the boundary, the question is what survives turnover and what a tenant can operate without a cord. National pricing runs $250 to $2,600 per window for custom treatments, $300 to $4,000 for drapery, and $60 to $600 for standard stock shades, which is the only setting where stock ever makes sense here. Lead time is 2 to 5 weeks, so a run of 40 shades gets planned rather than grabbed.

Campus boundaries, downtown Franklin and the school corporation

The district is bounded by East Monroe Street, South Forsythe Street, Grizzly Drive, Park Avenue and Branigin Boulevard, immediately southeast of downtown Franklin and a short distance from the courthouse square. Inside those bounds you'll find Old Main, which is Stott, Bailey and Chandler Halls, along with Shirk Hall, Richardson Chapel, the B.F. Hamilton Library, Barnes Science Hall and the Eli Lilly Campus Center. Families living on the streets outside the boundary are in Franklin Community School Corporation, one district for the entire city, feeding Franklin Community Middle School and Franklin Community High School.

Who controls the Franklin College district, and why your street probably isn't in it

There's no homeowners association and no architectural review board over private owners here, because there are no private owners. Franklin College holds the campus as a single institutional owner and controls its own buildings, so the questions a homeowner asks about covenants don't apply inside the boundary at all. What does apply is the confusion: a Franklin address near the campus is often assumed to be inside a National Register district when it isn't. The listing covers 19 contributing resources on about 207 acres and stops at East Monroe, Forsythe, Grizzly, Park and Branigin. Outside that line, no district rule reaches your windows.

Window Treatment Services in Franklin College Historic District

Every service Franklin Window Treatments offers across Franklin is available to Franklin College Historic District homeowners.

Serving Homes Across Franklin

Franklin College Historic District is one of several Franklin communities we serve. We measure and install across Franklin, Johnson County, and surrounding areas.

Franklin College Historic District Window Treatment FAQ

Questions we hear most often from Franklin College Historic District homeowners.