Jewett House

The Jewett House, home of chemistry professor Frank Jewett and public health and hygiene author Sarah Frances Gulick Jewett.

 

This brick Victorian house, built in 1884, was the home of Oberlin College chemistry professor Frank Fanning Jewett and his wife, Sarah Frances Gulick Jewett, author of books on public health and hygiene. The Jewetts and the subsequent owners, the Hubbards, rented rooms to male Oberlin College students, who slept in the attic and studied on the second floor. One of Jewett's students was Charles Martin Hall, who discovered the cost-effective process for commercially manufactured aluminum. The house and simple woodshed feature an exhibit called Aluminum: The Oberlin Connection, which includes a re-creation of Hall's 1886 woodshed experiment.

The standard tour of the Jewett House focuses on the rapid technological advancement of the 1880s, exemplified by Charles Martin Hall's aluminum discovery, the history of social reform, Oberlin College and town history, and life in the 1880s-1910s.

 

The front parlor of the Jewett House