Franklin Village Historic District

Franklin is a small village in the narrow Ouleout Creek Valley of Delaware County, New York, and its historic district takes in 169 properties with 248 contributing buildings and features. Most are frame houses in Federal, Greek Revival and Italianate styles, with modest Victorian and early twentieth century examples. Three churches include an 1865 board and batten Gothic Revival church attributed to Richard and Richard M. Upjohn. Two three-story buildings from the Delaware Literary Institute, a colonnaded dormitory of 1854 and the stone New Stone Hall of 1856, anchor the educational group, joined by a Neoclassical school of 1932. A row of six intact Italianate stores forms the business district. Carriage barns and other outbuildings, four cemeteries and a monument add to the setting. Common scale, regular setbacks, maple shade trees and bluestone sidewalks give the village an unusually consistent appearance, which is why it is described as perhaps the most intact historic village in the western Catskills.