To Plan A Trip

The Benjamin Franklin House is ideally located in central London, close to Trafalgar Square, Charing Cross, and the Strand. The two nearest tube stops are Charing Cross and Embankment, at opposite ends of Craven Street. The house is open to the public Wednesday through Sunday, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Admission is eight pounds for adults and five pounds for seniors, students, and children ages 5 to 12. The Web site is www.benjaminfranklinhouse.org and the phone number is 011 44 (0) 20 7930 9121.

Craven Street has some other American connections. Aaron Burr occupied No. 30 for a time (as did the staff of the Benjamin Franklin House, when construction forced them out of No. 36). In 1849 Herman Melville spent a couple of months at No. 25 while he tried to find an English publisher for his novel White-Jacket .

There are a few good pubs nearby. Franklin probably frequented the Ship and Shovel, just down Craven Street and around the corner. If you turn onto Craven Passage, you’ll find the Sherlock Holmes Pub. Franklin lived in a world without Sherlock Holmes, but that shouldn’t keep you from stopping in, enjoying a pint, and surveying the pub’s collection of Sherlockiana, including the re-creation of Holmes’s famous sitting room that was originally built for the Festival of Britain in 1951.

—T.H.