The school is set to be closed by 2014, but there are some things in the school that still remain a mystery.

1. How old is the school?

“The school’s probally frm the 1960s” said Caryolyn Hoye, Junior, “but it’s in worse conditions, like it was built in the 50s”

Although many joke about the actual age of the school, there is a plaque at the front of the school that has the exact date of the school.

The plaque reads “Completed September 1971” meaning it is currently 41.

If everything goes as planned and the school really is torn down in 2014, then the building would be 43 years old.

2. The old high school

What is soon to be the old high school was once the new high school and what is soon to be the old old high school was once the old high school, but most people know it as Davis Thayer Elementary School.

The brick building on union street, right across from the graveyard (because best way to scare kids is to put their school across from a grave yard), was built in 1947 and is still standing and working after 66 years.

“I remember in fifth grade, people from the senior center came to tour the school” said junior and Davis Thayer alumni Ashely Kennes “it’s strange, but cool, to know that they were using the same buildings as us”

3. The under ground bunker

Folk lure at Franklin High suggests that there is some kind of tunnel system or underground bomb shelter, persumely with some sort of JFK shrine and  thousands of cans of Spam.

Of course this is just something people tell the freshmen in order to freak them out, but it may have some truth to it. There are concrete ‘tunnels’ underneath the field house.

By ‘tunnels’ I mean air vents. Although the vents are big enough to stand up in and made out of concrete, they aren’t much of a tunnel system unless you want to go across the field house unnoticed or you just want to skip gym class.

The school does use them as storage according to sophomores who have been down in the vents and wanted to remain anonymous.

“It’s really stuffy and cramped” said one source “it’s maybe shoulder width, but you can easily stand up in them”

“If you want to go in them” added another source “you just have to lift up the green boxes, it’s mostly storage underneath”

4. The real name of the field house

On the subject of the field house, it turns out the the field house, isn’t officially named ‘the field house’.

The formal name of the field house or as older generations or surrounding towns may call it, ‘The Rubberdome‘, is the Woodrow L. Abbott Field House.

Woodrow L. Abbott was the chairman of the High School Building Committee.

Franklin’s iconic field house will be torn down in 2014 leaving many to wonder what the new gym will be named.

5. The flower room

Walking into the front lobby, you may notice a beautiful room with flowers and sayings on the walls. But many are confused when they walk into the room, only to see it is a dead end.

The room was once a phone booth, but because we no longer live in the 20th century, the phone was removed and in 2010, four students decided to pain the room.

The writing on the walls include phrases such as “Life is too short to be anything but happy” and “learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow”

The mural was painted by Mike Barry, Mary Cole, Becca Leuth, and Karen Anselm.