I've admired the Oberlin Memorial Arch on Tappan Square for many years (shown above on the vintage postcard) but didn't know what it was commemorating. According to the Oberlin College Archives website, "The Memorial Arch was erected as a memorial to the missionaries of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions who lost their lives in the Boxer uprising in China in 1900. The cornerstone of the Arch was laid October 16, 1902, and it was dedicated May 14, 1903. The construction is of Indiana limestone. Two handsome bronze tablets perpetuate the names of the thirteen missionaries and of their five children who were massacred by the Boxers.
"Oberlin was chosen as the proper place for this monument because all but four of those who suffered martyrdom were Oberlin students or members of the families of these students. The Memorial Arch is located on the west side of Tappan Square."
The Arch has been the subject of many postcards over the years, and thus provided me a good opportunity to create some Then & Now treatments.
Like the Knights Who Say Ni, it is in need of shrubbery.
6 comments:
Thanks, Dan - nice photos! A beautiful structure.
Like (almost) everything in town, The Arch is a point of controversy with a decision made by individual graduating seniors to walk either through the structure, or around it, based on various political and social beliefs. Some of them quite convoluted. From 2004: https://www2.oberlin.edu/stupub/ocreview/2004/5/14/commentary/article8.html
Some years, the administration bypasses the problem (and the related angst) by bypassing it during the "graduation march."
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/04/28/bypassing-controversy
"There's no place like Oberlin."
Don - Wasn't Oberlin founded by missionaries?
Those old kodachrome postcards just add a little richness to the Arch.Because it does look a little drab when seen in person.
Buster: Sort of... John Shipherd and Philo Stewart, Presbyterian ministers, who in 1832, headed south, seeking relief from the sin-pits of northern Lorain County (Black River, but mostly Elyria). They stopped in what is now Tappan Square (probably the only solid land in the surrounding swamp) and took not being attacked by a bear as a sign from God that they were in the right place to establish a religious utopia free from the horrors of the devil's world. One can't help but wonder what they would make of the place in its present form. Probably not quite what they expected.
It's a fairly popular place for kids to sit and study. It could do with a good cleaning. And, like Dan, I think it would benefit from a visit from the Knights Who Say "Ni!" Though, I think it used to have bushes around it and they were removed because they were old and over-grown. But that might be a figment of my broken-down memory.
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