Side A : "Charles M. Hall and Frank F. Jewett"

Side B : Same 

Location: SW Corner of Main & College Streets

Dedicated: 2008

Sponsors: City of Oberlin Historic Preservation Commission, Oberlin Heritage Center, and The Ohio Historical Society
 

Side A : "Downtown Oberlin Historic District"

The intersection of Main and College streets has been the center of Oberlin since the town and college were founded in 1833. The first downtown buildings were made of wood and were destroyed by a series of spectacular fires. The first college building, Oberlin Hall, stood on the southwest corner of College and Main and included recitation rooms, a dining hall, chapel, offices, and lodging. In 1887, Akron architect Frank Weary designed the large brick building at numbers 5 to 13 West College. Number 23 West College (Gibson Block) once housed a silent movie theater on the second floor. East College Street's historic buildings include the Apollo Theater, which showed Oberlin's first talking movie on May 11, 1928. From 1897 to 1929, an interurban streetcar line connected Oberlin's downtown to Cleveland. Oberlin's downtown historic district was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.
 

Side B:

Oberlin's historic downtown buildings are typical of American commercial architecture from the 1860s to the 1930s. The southeast corner block is the first commercial building in Oberlin with an iron frame. It was designed by Cleveland architect Walter Blythe in 1882 and has housed a bank since 1904. At 39 South Main Street is the Union School (now the New Union Center for the Arts), also designed by Blythe and built in 1874 of local red brick. Beyond it at 69 South Main is the old Town Hall, built in 1919. Across the street is the Post Office, designed in neoclassical style by Toledo architect Alfred Hahn and dedicated in 1933. At numbers 24 and 18 South Main Street were two African American businesses, Marie DeFrance's Millinery Shop and the Pettiford family's popular bakery.

Location: Oberlin Heritage Center Grounds
73 1/2 S. Professor Street

Dedicated: 2003

Sponsors: Ohio Bicentennial Commission, The Longaberger Company, Oberlin Heritage Center/O.H.I.O., and The Ohio Historical Society
 

Side A : "Oberlin College and Community-Founded in 1833"

Reverend John Jay Shipherd and Philo Penfield Stewart envisioned an educational institution and colony dedicated to the glory of God and named in honor of John Frederick Oberlin, a pastor in the Alsace-Lorraine region of France. Early colonists signed a covenant pledging themselves to the plainest living and highest thinking. Oberlin (known as the Oberlin Collegiate Institute until 1850 when it was renamed Oberlin College) was the first coeducational institution to grant bachelor's degrees to women and historically has been a leader in the education of African Americans. In fact, African American and white children studied together in the town's one-room schoolhouse, in defiance of Ohio's "Black laws" forbidding this practice. The schoolhouse, built 1836-1837, is part of the Oberlin Heritage Center.
 

Side B : "Abolitionism in Oberlin"

Oberlin became an abolitionist hotbed and a major stopover on the Underground Railroad before the Civil War. Abolitionists here held a range of opinions; some believed prayer could end slavery; others pursued political measures; and a few embraced violence. Oberlin also was active in reform movements, including women's rights, suffrage, temperance, and village improvement. Behind this marker is the home of Giles Shurtleff, an abolitionist, professor, and army general who led the first African American regiment from Ohio to serve in the Civil War. The home's second owner was James Monroe, Oberlin's best-known political abolitionist. Monroe was a professor, a U.S. Congressman, and the U.S. consul in Brazil during the Civil War. He lived here with his wife, Julia, a daughter of Oberlin's great religious leader, Charles Grandison Finney.

Location: 315 E. College Street

Dedicated: 2002

Sponsors: Ohio Bicentennial Commission, The Longaberger Company, Oberlin Heritage Center/O.H.I.O., and The Ohio Historical Society

Side A : "The Burrell-King House"

Jabez Lyman Burrell (1806-1900), originally from Massachusetts, built this house in 1852. Burrell made his living as a cattleman and farmer, but devoted much of his time serving the cause of abolitionism, helping slaves, who had escaped the South, get to Sheffield and from there to Lorain and across Lake Erie to Canada. He was also devoted to equal education for all, providing funding to a freedmen's school in Selma, Alabama, and serving as a trustee of the Oberlin Collegiate Institute, well known for educating African Americans and women. From 1884 to 1934, this was the home of Henry Churchill King (1858-1934), who was the president of Oberlin College from 1902-1927. The Kings added the porches and rear wing and made their home a social center for the college and community. The house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a City of Oberlin Historic Landmark.
 

Side B : Same

Location: Westwood Cemetery, Morgan Street
Southwest edge of Oberlin
 

Dedicated: 2005

Sponsors: City of Oberlin, Oberlin Heritage Center/O.H.I.O., and The Ohio Historical Society

Side A : "Westwood Cemetery"

Shortly after Oberlin Colony was established in 1833, a two-acre burying ground was set aside south of Plum Creek in the area bounded by Main, Morgan, and Professor streets. By 1861, however, with the town and Oberlin College growing and the Civil War escalating, the need for a larger cemetery became clear. After an extensive search, 27.5 acres of land belonging to Henry Safford were acquired one mile west of the center of Oberlin. H.B. Allen was hired to create a design in the style of the Rural Cemetery Movement, and in July 1864 Westwood Cemetery was formally dedicated. Burials in Westwood had actually begun in August 1863, and over the next few years hundreds of remains were reinterred from Oberlin's "Old Cemetery" and from burying grounds in surrounding communities. In the mid-1860s the cemetery was enlarged to its present 47 acres, and in 2004 burials and memorials were estimated to number almost ten thousand. (continued on other side)
 

Side B :

(continued from other side) Even though H.B. Allen's design was not fully implemented, Westwood Cemetery reflects the basic goal of the Rural Cemetery Movement; that is, to provide a serene, parklike setting in which the living could enjoy a respite from daily pressures and become informed and inspired by memorials to the dead. The grave markers in Westwood bear testimony to Oberlin's early and continued commitment to major national moral and social issues, chief among them abolition of slavery, higher education for all regardless of race or gender, defense of democracy, missionary activity, temperance, suffrage for all, and civil rights. Westwood's first visitors came by horse and carriage, but today strollers and joggers, bird watchers and dog walkers, and genealogists and historians enjoy the peace and beauty of the cemetery. Westwood Cemetery is a City of Oberlin Historic Landmark and is part of the National Park Service's National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom program.

Location: King Building
10 North Professor Street

Dedicated: 2008

Sponsors: Philosophy Department, Oberlin College, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Youngstown State University, and The Ohio Historical Society

Side A : "Willard Van Orman Quine"

Willard Van Orman Quine was one of the greatest philosophers and logicians of the 20th century. Born in Akron on June 25, 1908, Quine studied philosophy and logic at Oberlin College (B.A. 1930). He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University in 1932 and spent his entire career on the Harvard faculty, from 1956 to 1978 as Edgar Pierce Professor of Philosophy. Quine's early research in logic led to his New Foundations system of set theory and to the Quine-McCluskey algorithm, used in computer science. His textbook Methods of Logic established the standards for undergraduate logic instruction. [continued on other side]
 

Side B :

[continued from other side] Willard Quine's work in logic broadened into philosophy. He articulated a deeply systematic scientific world view which rejects non-empirical knowledge and maintains that philosophy itself is continuous with natural science. His essay "Two Dogmas of Empriricism" (1951) and book Word and Object (1960) are classics of 20th century philosophy. Quine's achievements brought him many honors, including honorary degrees from seventeen universities in seven countries, the Rolf Schock Prize in 1993 and Kyoto Prize in 1996. Quine died on December 25, 2000.
 

Location: Northeast corner of Main (State Route 58) and Lorain Streets (Hwy 511)

Sponsors: Friends of Freedom Society / Ohio Underground Railroad Association

Side A : "Oberlin and the Underground Railroad"

Side B :