Allen Memorial Art Museum bulletin

              The Beginning Years
How Obeilin's land was marked off in 1835
has determined to a large extent the relative positions of the town and college to this day. An
1835 plat shows that small individual lots for
building houses or shops were confined largely
to the east side of Main Street, extending north
and south (Fig. 3). Land bounded by Lorain and
Main Streets and extending west and south was
set aside for the college. Individual lots were also
marked on the north side of Lorain Street.
Y /j/#s/ ft   /f/f
Yx2, 'J*aSw&i
ZL.      gp-xg'J.
t -- UU^
j'i   <La.       ft
,'  T~ ...   . f{  s~:.
3. Plat of Oberlin, 1835
As a struggling colony, Oberlin's immediate
concerns were to provide a roof over everyone's
head and classroom space. To fulfill this purpose, Oberlin Hall was built in 1835 at the
corner of what is today Main and College streets:
a wood-frame, multi-use building, erected to
satisfy the need for living quarters, chapel and
classrooms. Also in 1835, Tappan Hall was constructed at the center of the delineated "college
green," facing east toward Main Street where
most of Oberlin's merchants would locate themselves. Tappan Hall's institutional importance
was clearly exptessed by its position on the square;
its symbolic status, though the building has long
since been demolished, has endured as a part of
the Oberlin College seal.
Other college buildings at this time were located on College Street. These included a carpenter's shop (the college originally provided for
many of the settlets' needs), Colonial Hall, Cincinnati or "Slab" Hall, which was torn down five
years aftei it was built due to structural imperfections, and First Ladies Hall.5 Asa Mahan,
Oberlin's first president, and Charles Finney, its
second, occupied college-built houses on Professor Street, facing the town and the back of Tap-
pan Hall. The relationship of the college to the
town at this moment can be seen in Figure 1:
the college was situated at the center of town on
a large lawn (Tappan Square), and its officials
lived on the college side of the square, "backing
up," so to speak, the college buildings.
The only anomaly to the plan of the square
in 1844 was the location of First Church. Although First Church was of equal importance to
Tappan Hall as a centei of both town and college, its physical position relative to each is enigmatic, since it faces neither the town nor the
college green.6 When built, it was the largest
building west of the Alleghenies, and its position at the crossroads of the only road out of, or
into Oberlin did render it an impressive gateway.
Still, its orientation ignored the developing college and town, off to the south. Today First
Church is still the only building on the square
which does not directly acknowledge it.
Utopia Displaced
The period from 1855 to 1875 is that in
which the relationship between college and town
was most clearly delineated (Fig. 2). French and
10