Oberlin Heritage Center
The Oberlin Heritage Center is the historical society and historic preservation organization for the city of Oberlin, Ohio. Its complex of historic sites includes the Monroe House (1866), Jewett House (1884) and Little Red Schoolhouse (1836–1837).
The brick Italianate-style Monroe House was originally the home of General Giles W. Shurtleff, leader of the first African-American regiment from Ohio to serve in the American Civil War. The brick Victorian Jewett House was the home of Oberlin College chemistry professor Frank Fanning Jewett and his wife, Sarah Frances Gulick Jewett. One of Jewett's students was Charles Martin Hall, who discovered the cost-effective process for commercially manufactured aluminum.
The house and woodshed feature an exhibit called "Aluminum: The Oberlin Connection," which includes a re-creation of Hall's 1886 woodshed experiment. The Little Red Schoolhouse was the first public school in town. Notably, in defiance of Ohio's "Black Laws", the school was interracial from its inception.