Planet Word

This guide to the old Franklin School building in Washington, D.C. opens on the night of September 26, 2008, as city workers dismantled the last cots in a homeless shelter that had once sheltered hundreds. It traces the shelter's founding in 2002 by activists who led men in from the park outside, the community fight to save it in 2007, and Mayor Adrian Fenty's abrupt closure that sidestepped a new city law. You'll also hear about architect Adolf Cluss's 1869 schoolhouse and Alexander Graham Bell's early wireless broadcast from its roof.