Village Housing: 197 W. Lorain Street

Date

1854-present

Location

197 West Lorain Street

Architects/Collaborators

Builder unknown

Style

Greek Revival

History

The core of this house was built in 1854; many additions have been made to it since then. In 1862, Sela G. Wright, an ardent missionary to the Chippewa Indians in Red Lake, Minnesota and a contributor to the abolitionist movement, bought the house. During the Civil War he worked to help blacks freed by the Union army in the South. Across the postwar decades he spent long stretches in Minnesota preaching among the Indians. He finally retired from the field in 1889 and died in Oberlin in 1905.  His wife Emelie and their daughters, all three of whom attended Oberlin College, lived in the house from 1862 until 1940, often with boarders. Henry Churchill King, a president of the College, roomed in this house when he was an undergraduate student at Oberlin. The College bought the house in 1963 and converted it to faculty housing. It is now one of many houses in Oberlin's Village Housing program for students.

For more information on Sela G. Wright and his work with the Ojibway, see the Sela G. Wright Digital Collection, Oberlin College Library, 2011.

Sources

Geoffrey Blodgett, Oberlin Architecture, College and Town: A Guide to Its Social History (Oberlin, OH: Oberlin College, 1985).

Ohio Historic Inventory by D.G. Henry, G. Baudoin, and M. Franck, Ohio HIstoric Preservation Office, January 26, 2002. Accessed from the Oberlin Heritage Center website, June 25, 2015.