The Franklin Falls Historic District is a 75-acre (30 ha) historic district encompassing most of the civic and industrial heart of Franklin, New Hampshire, which saw its most significant development in the second half of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th.

[1] The Franklin Falls area was occupied by the Penacook tribe of the Abenaki people at the time of European settlement of New England in the 17th century (documentation which has been confirmed by archaeological evidence found at Odell Park).

This was followed over the subsequent decades by the construction of a number of predominantly brick mill complexes that now line the river.

Many of the brick Italianate buildings that line Central Street were built in the 1860s and 1870s.

The area's civic improvements included the establishment of Odell Park in the 1890s, and the addition of several important civic structures: the Franklin Opera House, which houses town offices, was built in 1892, and a number of private libraries established in the 1890s were unified in the Franklin Free Public Library, whose 1907 building was funded in part by steel baron and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie.