In today’s column we will be visiting Franks Corner. Mrs. Barbara Wiemann, historian of the Governor Wolf Historical Society and former librarian at the Easton Area Public Library, has thoroughly researched the history of Mr. Fred Franks, a titan in the Lehigh Valley cement industry. He resided on the corner of Nor-Bath Boulevard and Airport Road. Mrs. Wiemann has graciously allowed us to publish her research below.
Franks Corner
Recently, a lady living in Colorado called the [Governor Wolf Historical] Society to request information about Franks Corner and her childhood home at the corner of Nor-Bath Boulevard and Airport Road. I sent her the Franks Corner information from “James and Linda Wright’s Place Names of Northampton County,” which says that the name is from the large white house at the northeast corner of Airport Road and Route 329, built by Fred Frantz, superintendent of Bath Portland Cement Company; Frantz was corrupted to Franks and the name dates from the circa 1930s. Wright cited the East Allen Township handbook as his source.
Frantz and Franks
I then decided to find some biographical information about Frederick J. Frantz, since he was named as a previous occupant of her home. However, census and draft records, as well as his obituary, proved that Frantz was a store keeper, retail merchant and Bethlehem Steel carpenter, not a cement company superintendent.
A search of the Morning Call archives and various cement histories revealed that the cement superintendent and resident of the large home was Frederick Benjamin Franks, usually known as Fred.
Fred B. Franks
Over the course of his long life, Franks organized and built five cement companies in Northampton County. He was recognized as an expert in the cement industry. A 1928 article in Rock Products: Cement and Engineering News described Franks’ recently opened Keystone Portland Cement Company plant in East Allen Township and noted his reputation for building fine cement plants and building each one better than the last one.
Franks was born in Philadelphia on Dec. 31, 1869, and began his 80-year business career as a machinist. By the time he was 33 years old, he had built and sold his first cement company at Martins Creek. Fred immediately began work on his second plant, the Bath Portland Cement Company in East Allen Township, in 1903. He remained associated with this company until it was sold to the Lehigh Portland Cement Company in 1925. He served as vice president of the company and plant superintendent.
The Company House
As superintendent, Fred and his family lived in a home located on company property at Airport Road and Route 329. He had married Florence Gish, also a Philadelphia native, in 1894. Their only child, Frederick B. Franks Jr., was born in 1899. While the large house was their home, it was also used to entertain company visitors. When an overheated stove fire damaged the house in February 1916, the Morning Call described the house as “magnificent, one of the finest in the Lehigh Valley” and noted the considerable loss of pictures, bric-a-brac and art objects.
The Franks moved to Allentown before the BPCC was sold to the Lehigh Portland Cement Company. LPCC acquired the house as part of their purchase. In 1942, LPCC sold the house and almost four acres to Ted and Lola Drummond, and in 1950 the Drummonds sold the home to Earl White, the father of the lady who called the Society.
After BPCC
After BPCC, Franks built the Keystone Portland Cement Company in East Allen, sold his controlling interest, and then built the National Portland Cement Company, retiring in 1943. In 1934 he and a partner acquired the Horlacher Brewing Company and he was a vice president of the company when he died in 1968 at age 98.
We thank Mrs. Wiemann for all her research and we hope she continues looking back at our local history and we look forward to working with her in the future.
