This image is of a group of students arranged on the front steps of Prospect School. Prospect and Pleasant Street schools were identical buildings both built in 1887. Prospect served the west side and Pleasant the east side of town. Writing on the…
The Toni Morrison Society launched the "Bench by the Side of the Road" project in 2006, on the occasion of novelist Toni Morrison's 75th birthday. The society places benches at sites important to African American history. The project developed in…
This boulder, one of the three on Tappan Square, was gifted to the college in 1933 by Edwin Hill, who found it on his farm. It honors the two founders of Oberlin, John J. Shipherd and Philo P. Stewart.
The Oberlin Class of 1882 gifted this boulder, taken from Plum Creek, to the college as their class gift. Today it sits in Tappan Square near the Memorial Arch off of North Professor Street.
The John Mercer Langston House, built in 1855 and located on East College Street across from Eastwood Elementary School, was the home of John Mercer Langston and his family from 1856 until 1867. John Mercer Langston was an Oberlin graduate and…
A photo of an 1855 class from the Preparatory Department of Oberlin College. The college offered pre-college education in the Preparatory Department in the 19th and early 20th centuries. One of the students in the class (upper right) was Anthony…
Photo from the Big Parade 2014. The Big Parade has been an Oberlin tradition since the early 2000s. Community residents and college students make floats, wear costumes, and march through Tappan Square.
Photo from the Big Parade 2014. The Big Parade has been an Oberlin tradition since the early 2000s. Community residents and college students make floats, wear costumes, and march through Tappan Square.
Photo from the Big Parade 2014. The Big Parade has been an Oberlin tradition since the early 2000s. Community residents and college students make floats, wear costumes, and march through Tappan Square.
Photo from the Big Parade 2014. The Big Parade has been an Oberlin tradition since the early 2000s. Community residents and college students make floats, wear costumes, and march through Tappan Square.
Photo from the Big Parade 2014. The Big Parade has been an Oberlin tradition since the early 2000s. Community residents and college students make floats, wear costumes, and march through Tappan Square.
Photo from the Big Parade 2014. The Big Parade has been an Oberlin tradition since the early 2000s. Community residents and college students make floats, wear costumes, and march through Tappan Square.
Photo from the Big Parade 2014. The Big Parade has been an Oberlin tradition since the early 2000s. Community residents and college students make floats, wear costumes, and march through Tappan Square.
Photo from the Big Parade 2014. The Big Parade has been an Oberlin tradition since the early 2000s. Community residents and college students make floats, wear costumes, and march through Tappan Square.
Photo from the Big Parade 2014. The Big Parade has been an Oberlin tradition since the early 2000s. Community residents and college students make floats, wear costumes, and march through Tappan Square.
Photo from the Big Parade 2014. The Big Parade has been an Oberlin tradition since the early 2000s. Community residents and college students make floats, wear costumes, and march through Tappan Square.
The Kendall Precision Lawn Chair Drill Team at the Big Parade, 2014. Kendall is a retirement community in Oberlin. Every year residents come out and do a synchronized routine set to music with their lawn chairs.
Marks the site of the house built by Jabez Burrell, an important local abolitionist, and Henry Churchill King, who was president of Oberlin College from 1902-1927. Erected in 2002 by The Ohio Bicentennial Commission. The Longaberger Company. Oberlin…
Marker about the history of First Church and Antoinette Brown Blackwell, an 1847 graduate of Oberlin's Ladies Department and one of the first women ordained as a Christian minister. Erected in 2014 by 2014 by the First Church in Oberlin, United…
Historic marker erected by the Ohio Bicentennial Commission, the Longaberger Co, the Oberlin Heritage Center / O.H.I.O, and the Ohio Historical Society. Front of maker is about the founding of the Oberlin College and community of Oberlin and the back…
A photo from 1962 of five first year students with the rock they decorated as Santa Claus. At that point, decorating the boulders on Tappan Square was still considered an act of vandalism and the Oberlin Tribune reported on December 18, 1962 that the…
Three pictures of a rock depicting Pablo Picasso's 1903 work, "The Old Guitarist," painted by two members of the Oberlin High School Art Club on May 29, 2008
The boulder that the Class of 1898 pull out of Plumb Creek, dragged to Tappan Square, and presented as a gift to the college. The plaque reads: GLACIAL BOULDER OF GRANITOID GNEISS FROM EASTERN CANADA EXCAVATED FROM TEN FEET BELOW THE SURFACE AT THE…
A photo of the boulder that was excavated by the Oberlin College Class of 1898 and placed on Tappan Square, across from the Conservatory. The class presented the boulder as their gift to the college. Since 1962, the 1898 boulder has been one of the…
Oberlin High School Class of 2017 celebrates their graduation from Prospect Elementary School and their advance to Langston Middle School by decorating all three Tappan Square rocks.
Oberlin Rock painted with an elephant. These words are painted inside the elephant: Congratulations on the acquisition of your pachyderm Mr. Barnum, 2-3 1882.
Wilson Bruce Evans and his brother, Henry Evans, were free African-Americans who lived in Oberlin. They built this house in 1855-1856 for Wilson Bruce Evans and his family. Wilson Bruce Evans was an abolitionist who participated in the 1858…
Photo of 20 of the 37 men indicted for freeing an alleged escaped slave from his captors in Wellington, Ohio in 1858. Pictured from left to right: Jacob R. Shepherd, O.S.B. Wall, poring Wadsworth, David Watson, Wilson Bruce Evans, Eli Boise, Ralph…
Chalk mural of Maya Angelou with a quote from "Still I Rise" from the Oberlin 2014 Chalk Walk sponsored by the Firelands Association for the Visual Arts
This granite monolith located on the Oberlin College campus commemorates Oberlin's namesake, who was a pastor in the France in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The monument incorporates an optical effect that Oberlin used in his pastoral…
The Memorial Arch, erected in Oberlin's Tappan Square in 1903, is the only monument to the United States that relates to the history of the Boxer Rebellion, an anti-imperialist uprising in China. In 1900, thirteen American missionaries and five of…
In 1837, Oberlin became the first college to admit women on an equal basis with men. This memorial was erected in 1937 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of co-education. Inscribed with the text, "This gateway commemorates the enrance of women into…
This marble and bronze fountain memorializes Katharine Wright Haskell, an 1898 graduate of Oberlin College. Wright was the sister of Wilbur and Orville Wright and she assisted them in their pursuit of flight. She became the second woman ever to serve…
The city of Oberlin dedicated this memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. in 1987 at the same time as they changed the name of the park where it is located from Vine Street Park to Martin Luther King, Jr. Park. Famed civil rights leader Martin Luther…
This memorial, originally placed in Westwood Cemetery sometime around 1865, honors the two Black Oberlin residents who were died as a result of John Brown's 1859 raid on a US arsenal in Harper's Ferry, Virginia. Brown and his followers were…
This gateway was erected as a memorial to John Herbert Nichols, a longtime director of Oberlin College's Athletic Department, on the occassion of his 1955 retirement. It marks the entrance to Oberlin's athletic fields.
A picture of Oberlin's Memorial Arch from September 27, 2004. The arch, erected in memory of American missionaries killed in the 1899 Boxer Rebellion in China, was built in Oberlin because most of those killed were Oberlin alumni or their families.…
Erected in 1943 in the midst of World War II, the Oberlin War Memorial incorporated the marble tablets removed from an early war memorial that had been dismantled in 1934 in response to strong pacifist sentiment. Tablets on the monument's brick wall…
One of the most recent monuments erected in Oberlin, this placque remembers nine men with links to Oberlin who served in the Tuskeegee Airmen during World War II. The Tuskeegee Airmen were the first black pilots allowed to fight in the US military;…
This monument, which was erected in 1990 and is located in Martin Luther King Park, commemorates the 1858 Oberlin-Wellington Rescue. In that year, slave catchers captured John Price, an escapee from slavery who was living outside Oberiln. A large…
Created by then college senior Cameron Armstrong in 1977, this sculpture of train tracks rising out from the ground commemorates Oberlin's importance as a stop on the Underground Railroad. Originally planned as a temporary installation, the…
The Soldiers Monument was erected in 1870 to honor the 96 Oberlin men who died in the Civil War. Of the fallen, 55 were students who had been enrolled in the college, and 41 were Oberlin residents. Once located at the corner of College and Professor…
The World War II memorial garden commemorates the 75 Oberlin college alumni who were killed in World War II. Unusual for a war memorial, the Oberlin memorial lists the names of all alumni who died in the war--including Masura Nakamura, who fought for…