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One gallery contains an interactive “wall of words.” Photo © Joseph Romeo

The flagship of Washington’s public education system
in the 1870s, the school was considered so important
and impressive that models of the building were sent to
international expositions in Vienna, Paris, and Philadelphia
during that decade. In 1880, it was the site of the first
wireless transmission of the human voice when Alexander
Graham Bell used one of his inventions, a photophone,
to send a message over a beam of light to a window in a
nearby building. Although there was a meticulous exterior
renovation in 1992, the fortunes of the building waned over
the course of the 20th century and it ceased being used as a
school decades ago. It served as a city homeless shelter from
2002 to 2008 and was then abandoned for more than 10 years.
Enter educator and philanthropist Ann Friedman.
A retired Montgomery County school teacher with a
longstanding interest in literacy, Friedman was searching
for a way to encourage a love of reading and writing among
young people. Planet Word, the museum she created in the
old Franklin School, has as its target audience children from
the age of 10 through 12. “This is the age when children are
liable to stop reading and we know that without readers
our democracy is doomed,” said Friedman, who is married
to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Through
visits to experiential museums around the country, such
as the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, New York; the
National Museum of Mathematics (MoMath) in New York
City; and the Exploratorium in San Francisco, Friedman
concluded that she could pull in her young visitors with
cool technology—and their engagement in reading and
Photo © Joseph Romeo writing would naturally follow.

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