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Grevemberg House   
Historic District   
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Main Street, Franklin's economic and cultural spine, runs alongside Bayou Teche and is a boulevard in the Historic District area. The neutral ground on east Main is the historic White Way, where ornamental lightning still stands and serves as a reminder of the charm and grace which characterized life in the city during the early decades of the twentieth century.

Although Main Street was the location of the town's earliest development, it retains only two reminders of the pre-Civil War era. One is Shadowlawn, a two-story frame mansion with six fluted colossal Corinthian columns forming the double entrance gallery. The other is the entire south end of Main Street between Gates Drive and Upperline Streets, dominated by six large Greek Revival homes, four of which incorporate colossal pediment porticos.

Despite the addition of smaller, more recent homes, the older structures dominate with their size and large, sweeping lawns. The area offers a quality of spaciousness characteristic of the town's pre-Civil War era. The pretentious grand village effect is enhanced by the two rows of live oaks which flank Main Street.

Since the town developed to some degree west of Main Street prior to the introduction of the railroad, there are several isolated mid-nineteenth century relics along First and Second Streets. Presumably raised during the turn-of-the century building boom, it is suspected that more of these raised cottages incorporating such elements as Corinthian columned galleries existed in the area at one time.

With the boom in the saw mill industry at the latter part of the 1800s and the coming of the railroad, these older houses became immersed in building activity, seeing mainly small frame houses with narrow setbacks, small lots, and Queen Anne and Eastlake details. These houses fall into three categories: shotgun houses, raised cottages with late nineteenth century details, and L-shaped houses with side gables and semi-octagonal bays. The finer examples of this last group are heavily worked with several kinds of imbricated shingles, turned posts, brackets, barge boards and gallery turrets.

Larger, two story turn-of the century houses occur with less frequency in the railroad development area and are somewhat isolated among smaller houses. Not forming any consistency in the neighborhood's overall streetscapes, these houses achieve their effect through the application of detailing which is much closer to the high style of the Queen Anne period than their smaller counterparts. Early twentieth century bungalows also occur in limited numbers in this area, but merely fill in existing areas predominated by earlier building styles.

In the commercial district, which includes a number of modern buildings, there are nonetheless many turn-of-the-century masonry structures, most of which are two stories high with parapeted caps reaching almost three stories. These buildings include such decorate treatments as steeped gables, brick panels, arched windows, ornamental keystones, plasters, crenellations and corbelled brickwork.