The Jewett House
This
brick Victorian house, built in 1884, was the home of Oberlin College
chemistry professor Frank Fanning Jewett and his wife, Sarah Frances Gulick
Jewett, author of books on public health and hygiene. The Jewetts and
the subsequent owners, the Hubbards, rented rooms to male Oberlin College
students, who slept in the attic and studied on the second floor. One
of Jewett's students was Charles Martin Hall, who discovered the cost-effective
process for commercially manufactured aluminum. The house and simple woodshed
feature an exhibit called Aluminum: The Oberlin Connection, which
includes a re-creation of Hall's 1886 woodshed experiment.
The standard tour of the Jewett House focuses on the rapid technological advancement of the 1880s, exemplified by Charles Martin Hall's aluminum discovery, the history of social reform, Oberlin College and town history, and life in the 1880s-1910s.