Oberlin in the News – Feb. 1961

Yesterday’s post was about the old Green Acres Children’s Home, which as located in Oberlin. Well, here are a couple more Oberlin news items of a historic nature that made their way into the Journal back in February 1961.

The first one, which appeared in the paper on Feb. 7, 1961 features a local landmark: the home of Charles Martin Hall, an Oberlin College graduate who discovered the electrolytic process for making aluminum.

Surprisingly (for this blog at least), the article was not about the house being torn down. The house is still there today at 64 E. College Street.

But the second Oberlin news item (which appeared in the Journal on Feb. 11, 1961) does indeed involve demolition of a historic structure so that – like the song says – they could “put up a parking lot."

The building being demolished was an old livery stable. As the article noted, “Constructed in 1915 by George Kelly and George Bailey as a livery stable, it was one of the finest such establishments in this area.

“The two horsemen, both of whom have since died, obviously had an eye for the future, for they also provided a space for the storage of automobiles, along with their carriage storage quarters and horse stables.

The livery stable business didn’t last very long, according to the article. By 1917 the business was sold.

The article (by Bob Thomas) sums up the building’s history very nicely. “So in a span of 45 years,” it notes, "a site that once was trampled by the hoofs of fine horses, gave way to the business of motor car repairs then a storage center and is now to become an off-street parking area.”

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Hey, I wonder how that Vermilion fox hunt (mentioned in an article right below the one about the livery stable) went. 

There’s a fox that I’ve seen every so often circling the old quarry behind my condo in Vermilion. Maybe he’s a descendant of a survivor from that 1961 hunt.

Tally-ho!