The Oberlin Review
<< Front page News September 17, 2004

Oberlin slips from sobriety

Considering the College’s strict, puritanical beginnings it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the town started out dry the sale of alcohol was prohibited. The original covenant of Oberlin College and town even stipulated that its members reject “all strong and unnecessary drink, even tea and coffee as far as practicable.”

Always given to moral fads, Oberlin originally embraced this restriction with fervor. In 1860 there were no less than four lectures given on the subject of temperance. Not ending there, Oberlin citizens were heavily involved in a myriad of organizations devoted to the subject: Ladies’ Temperance League, Lorain County Christian Temperance League, Lorain County Non-Partisan Temperance Workers, Loyal Temperance Army, Loyal Temperance Legion, Oberlin Christian Temperance Legion, Oberlin Temperance Alliance, Ohio Temperance Union, People’s Temperance Reform Party and finally, the Ohio Temperance Union which, bizarrely, was wet.

There were actually a lot of liquor related crimes. A family named Munson seems to have been particularly deviant in this case. A November 1865 Lorain County News headline read, “SF Munson Found Guilty.” He was found guilty for a liquor related crime. And then, 42 years later, a headline from an October 1907 issue of the Oberlin Weekly News read “Munson Bros. Guilty in Hard Cider Case.”

Lorain County seems to have supported Oberlin in the cause- for a little while. In March 1871, the Lorain County News reported the “Closing of the Last Liquor Saloon.” But then, in 1911, according to the Oberlin Weekly News, in June of that year there were “165 Licensed Saloons Reported in county.”

Things began to change in Oberlin itself because of architectural serendipity. In the 1950s an establishment located in Russia Township, just outside of Oberlin city limits, named Presti’s served alcohol. They expanded their parking lot. One half of their parking lot was inside Oberlin and they tapped into the city’s sewer line. Voila! Oberlin was selling alcohol, sort of.

The College, very unsurprisingly, took the next step in the fight for alcohol. In the early 1960s the Beer Co-op was invented and served 3.2 beer in the Rathskellar. The town took over from there.

In 1959 there was a local-opinion ballot in which alcohol sales were banned by a 2-1 margin. In the late 1970s and early ‘80s there was a local option that allowed the Oberlin Inn to sell limited alcoholic beverages. This was the first time a town business was officially allowed to sell alcohol. Over the 80’s and early ‘90’s, other businesses followed. Gibson’s applied for a permit to sell wine and the Feve (then under a different name) applied for a permit to serve it. Lorenzo’s also obtained a permit.

“I gather the primary motivations were economic — downtown businesses were suffering because they couldn’t serve even wine with dinners, etc,” Prue Richards of Oberlin Heritage said.

So the process of legalizing liquor sales only ended slightly over a decade ago. One can still observe the lack of hard liquor in Gibson’s. How did a college town survive for so long under such conditions?
 
 

   

The Review News Service: News, weather, sports and more, in your ObieMail every Sunday and Wednesday night. (Click here to subscribe.)