Article in Greenwich Citizen (CT) 1/7/2005 by Jennifer Cirillo

Frano's Steps to Accomplishment

Longtime Byram resident John Frano has a staircase for sale. The asking price hasn't been determined, but the circular staircase is one of only two in the world, to the best of his knowledge. The double-helix staircase that required nearly four years to complete was built without screws or steel or center post to support it. Just 50 gallons of glue hold the three-story structure together. Made from white oak, the most durable wood only grown in the United States, according to Frano, the stair makes two 360-degree spirals and is safe to walk on.
Frano built the 33-step stairway in memory of his daughter Deborah Ann who died in 1961 at the age of eight, only weighing 39 pounds, during open-heart surgery and his first wife, Anne, who passed away during the construction of the great stairway. "It was a big loss for us," he said. "But I never gave up."

Throughout his career as a woodworker and his life, Frano was never a guy to give up. Whether it was his constant activity while serving in the Navy during World War II or his drive to conquer what was believed to be the impossible, he was always ready to prove people wrong. And he did, by building a self-standing double-spiral staircase, one similar to a mysterious double-spiral staircase built in 1873 in Santa Fe, N.M.

Built in Loretto Chapel, that staircase is considered a construction miracle. The legend tells that the stair was built by an unknown carpenter who some believe to have been St. Joseph. The carpenter disappeared after the construction of the staircase was complete, but no one knew his name or where he came from. The structure still stands today, though it is not used often.

Built without any nails or screws engineers believed that the structure of the spiral stairs should not have been able to support any weight. Frano decided to duplicate the legendary staircase and completed it in 1980. Soon after the completion of the staircase the Smithsonian Institution contacted Frano with the hope to have his one-of-a-kind staircase donated to the museum. But distraught from the loss of his wife, he declined.

Now more than 20 years later, Frano is ready to part with his staircase that stands in a silo at Frano Lumber & Mill Corp. in Wilmington, Vt., where Frano's son, Kenneth John, 62, has taken over the business. Before the company was moved to Vermont in the early 1980s, Frano Lumber & Mill Corp. was a woodworking shop on 129 Water St. in Byram for 36 years, where Frano made a living as a carpenter, building staircases from Maine to Florida and Alaska.

Even though he is formally retired, Frano said that he would never stop working. At the age of 87, Frano continues to work at his craft when he can, helping his son construct spiral railings and smaller projects. But with his son approaching the age of retirement and the business being more than 50 years old, Frano wants others to be able to see history. After the double-helix stairway was completed, Frano was placed into the Guinness Book of World Records. After a decade, the record expired, according to his daughter, Arlene Tompson.

"Columbus sailed the ocean and everyone else followed him," said Frano with no hard feelings. "But everybody knows he was the first one, or more or less the first one, to cross the ocean." Frano was also featured in Home and Garden magazine in the late '40s for making circular stair railings from mahogany and walnut while other carpenters were using common woods like beech and maple. He also has a patent in 136 countries on a machine that makes circular railings automatically.

At 18, Frano graduated from the then in 1935 to learn woodworking. "Woodworking came naturally to me," he said. But he wasn't interested in making plain ordinary stairs that so many others could do. Not surprisingly, he wanted a challenge to construct something that was considerably more difficult, like circular staircases. "I always liked the finer work," he explained. "I always liked something that was difficult and hard to make. At that time, there was no one to teach me how to make staircases because people who knew circular stair building (which were a select few at the time) kept most of their knowledge to themselves. So I went to the library and studied."

His son explained that building stairs was his father's job, but also his hobby. Hanging around the shop at the age of 10, sweeping the floors and answering the phones, Ken was lucky enough to learn first hand his father's skills that few knew and were unwilling to share.

A self-taught craftsman, the elder Frano has left his mark up and down the East Coast and here in southern Connecticut, building more than 5,000 circular staircases (mostly in New Canaan, he said) and more than 40,000 straight staircases over the course of his career. When he first began building circular staircases, the cost was about $1,200. Now, he said, the base price would be around $25,000. "Put it this way; if you bought a Mercedes and paid $45,000 or $65,000, think about how many people have Mercedes. But if I build a staircase for your house, the way you want it, it's not that expensive because that's the only one there is. And when you sell your home that means a lot," he said.

One of Frano's first jobs was with Interstate Lumber Co., where he did learn a bit about stair building, he admits, but the majority of his knowledge was gained from books found at the library and on-the-job experience while traveling the country. Frano worked on the late John Rockefeller's home in Tarrytown, N.Y., the late Avery Rockefeller's home in Greenwich and the home of Sam Pryor, executive vice president of Pan American Airlines, also in Greenwich. He has also done work for colleges across the country, including Vassar and Hollins College, the latter the oldest chartered woman's college in Virginia.

Even though he has done work at the Time Life building in New York, Frano said that no job was more important than another. "To me every project was important because people needed it. You can't go upstairs without a staircase," he said. "My endeavor in life was to accomplish something, not only to earn money," said Frano. "I figure when you're alive, you only have one chance to accomplish something. And I did."