JAMES FRANKLIN, NOBLE INTENTIONS: 1993--2005

JAMES FRANKLIN: NOBLE INTENTIONS

James Franklin, a young reporter for the Joliet Beacon-News, bought 615 South Lincoln Avenue from the estate of Dorothy Greenwood in April, 1993.

According to Franklin's mother, Rita Franklin, James had every intention of fixing up the house, but never did. He applied for a permit to rehabilitate the home soon after purchasing the home in 1993, but city records show that he never picked up the permit. He is listed in city directories as living here between 1994 and 2005, but we also know that a parade of renters went through--Anibal Banos, Moyses Flores, Sylvia Lomas, and Peggy Niles, to name a few. Rita, who lived with him for only a short time, believes that these were friends; she described her son as a generous man, who liked to provide his down-and-out buddies with a place to live until they got on their feet. We know of them only because we receive their mail. Only Sylvia is ever mentioned in a city directory.

According to Rita, the wall separating the back bedroom from the storage area was torn down when they moved in, which leads us to believe that Louis Greenwood did tear it down. She said the house needed a lot of work, which her son wanted to do but never could--perhaps because of a busy, and erratic, newspaper schedule. It appears that Franklin removed the old knob-and-tube wiring, but never replaced it with a modern wiring system, which is why we had no upstairs lighting for the first six months that we lived here. Rita remembers the house as being very cold, and said that James would close off the unheated back bedroom all winter because even a space heater couldn't keep it warm. She was impressed with the apparent history of the home, and said that the city had even talked about designating it as an historic home. She had heard that this area had once been inhabited by a lot of rich people at the turn of the century, but that gangsters had also lived in the area. During the 1990's, the east side had deteriorated to the point that she was afraid to drive here at night.

Franklin sold the home to Yorktown Enterprises, an investment firm who "promised to take care of it," in 2005 for $119,000. We bought it in September, 2006.