FreshWater Cleveland thought we’d remind our readers of the 1917 colonial revival home and 100-acre estate of Frances Payne Bolton—known as Franchester—which has become a source for much speculation in recent years, as portions of the original property have been sold, demolished, or put on the market.

Tom Matowitz wrote about Bolton in his March 2022 Masterworks article “Frances Payne Bolton: Nursing advocate, Congresswoman, Franchester Estate owner,” and we think it deserves another look as speculation on the estate has continued and evolved over the past seven years.

In 1985 TRW built a 480,000-square-foot headquarters on 98 acres of the 110-acre Franchester estate in Lyndhurst. By 2002 TRW was acquired by a Virginia defense company, which subsequently donated the building and the property to the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, which in 2019 sold the sprawling campus, including the TRW building and Franchester.

Since no deal was made, in March 2023 the Clinic announced plans to raze the TRW building and sell the land for development, with promises that Franchester, being used for an event center at the time, would stay intact.

The TRW demolition was completed in October 2023 around the same time Legacy Village, which sits on 67 acres of the former Bolton property, also went on the market.

As we near the first quarter of 2025, there has been increased speculation of what will become of Franchester, which sits idle.

What will become of this gem of a historic home on Richmond Road? Will it return to its former glory, or go the way of some of its predecessors?