Third floor of city hall renovations

Story and photos by
COLIN MURPHEY
At first glance, the third floor of the Franklin City Hall may not look like much to the naked eye.
The space is stripped bare all the way down to the steel pillars and joists holding up the building. Evidence of months of restoration and work are everywhere. Paint has been stripped away and sections of the floor have been removed.
There are sections of the staircase leading up to the third floor with no handrails. There are no walls between rooms, just wall studs.
But looks can be deceiving. What looks like the bare-boned skeleton of what was once both a high school and elementary school is actually the framework for the next stage of evolution of a building that has served the community of Franklin for over a hundred years.
Once complete, the third floor of city hall will not only serve as a museum, it will serve as the final home for an invaluable collection of documents and writings that will, for generations to come, remind the community of the influence Franklin residents have had on the political landscape of Louisiana.
In particular, the museum will house the personal archives of the last Franklin resident to hold the office of governor of the state of Louisiana.
After nearly three years, a donation from the state of Louisiana and a visit by former Gov. Bobby Jindal in 2013, the third floor of the Franklin City Hall is on track to house the personal archives of two-term governor Mike Foster. Foster, who still resides just outside of Franklin, was governor of the state of Louisiana from 1996 to 2004.
Quoted in a previous article published in the Banner-Tribune, Jindal, who came up in the Louisiana political scene under Foster’s administration, said the museum and the archives would serve as an educational tool for young people in the region.
“It’s really about teaching our children about a great man and a great leader,” Jindal said. “I think we were blessed to have him as governor for eight years and to have Miss Alice (Foster) as First Lady for eight years.”
Foster’s administration created the state community and technical college system, Jindal pointed out, which is “one of the fastest growing in the country.”
Foster invested “hundreds of millions of dollars in K-12 education and was a champion for raising teacher salaries year after year,” Jindal said. “He was also a champion of creating a great business climate for our state. In his first year he took on tort reform, getting rid of punitive damages and cracking down on frivolous lawsuits. One of the issues he cared deeply about… was workman’s comp rights, which he is still involved in today.”
Jindal said Foster “left the state better than he found it.”
“Mike has always been the same person,” he said. “He’s always been a very modest, humble and plain-spoken person. Nothing changed about him when he was governor of the state.”
The site will also house the papers of other Franklin residents who have served in state and federal office.
The estimated date of completion for the third floor of the Franklin City Hall was not immediately available.