Charles Martin Hall Memorial

Charles Martin Hall Memorial

History & Restoration of the Marker:

The aluminum and stone marker, dedicated on the 40th anniversary of the graduation of the class of 1885, was commissioned by Charles Martin Hall’s classmates to commemorate his contributions to Oberlin College that allowed Tappan Square to become a beautiful and open public park for the community and student body. The marker was restored in 2008 and then moved from the center of Tappan Square to its present location.

The Monument Reads:

CHARLES M HALL ‘85

GAVE THESE WALKS AND PROVIDED

FOR THE CARE OF THE CAMPUS.

HIS CLASSMATES ON THEIR FORTIETH

ANNIVERSARY HERE EXPRESS THEIR

APPRECIATION OF HIS BENEFACTIONS.

1925

Making of the Man:

Heman Hall, Charles Hall’s father, moved to Oberlin as a boy with his family in 1835. Heman Hall and his future wife Sophronia Brooks graduated from Oberlin College in 1847 and 1850, respectively, and then soon married. The Halls then did missionary work around the Caribbean—their first five children were born in Jamaica—but the family was forced to return to Ohio in 1860, due to the anticipated onset of the American Civil War. Once resettled back in the States, the couple gave birth to Charles Martin Hall on December 6, 1863 in Thompson, Ohio.

Even at a young age, Charles was fascinated by chemistry. One example of his early interest in chemistry is when he asked his father to buy him fireworks and his father refused, citing cost and piety. Undeterred by his father, Hall set out to make his own fireworks by grinding potassium nitrate, sulfur, charcoal, and salt together to create rudimentary gunpowder. Hall’s concoction caught fire while he was mixing it and he destroyed his grandmother’s tablecloth trying to put out the fire.

Hall went on to study at Oberlin College like his parents and six siblings. During his time at college, Hall’s curiosity surrounding aluminum began. His professor and mentor, Frank Jewett, recounted that when: “Speaking to my students, I said that if anyone should invent a process by which aluminum could be produced on a commercial scale, not only would he be a great benefactor to the world but would also be able to lay up for himself a great fortune. Turning to a classmate, Charles Hall said, ‘I’m going for that metal.’ And he went for it.”

Hall graduated from Oberlin College with a Bachelor of Arts in 1885. Nearly a year later, by February 1886, Hall discovered while working in his family’s woodshed a new and more cost-effective way to create aluminum. His discovery was an effective and inexpensive electrolytic method, a process in which electricity is used to cause a chemical reaction, to produce aluminum and he quickly applied for an American patent. However, at roughly the same time, a Frenchman by the name of Paul Luis Toussain Héroult discovered a similar method and applied for a French patent. Because the two discoveries were so close in time to one another–albeit independently–this electrolysis process for producing aluminum is called the Hall-Heroult Process. This discovery significantly reduced the price of aluminum from $1 per ounce to $.30 per ounce of aluminum within just 4 years ($1 in 1884 equates to $26.16 in 2020). Hall quickly worked to found his own company called the Pittsburgh Reduction Company in 1888 with backing from six industrialist investors. The Pittsburgh Reduction Company later became the Aluminum Company of America, also known as Alcoa, in 1907, before the patent rights expired on Hall’s process. In 2016, Alcoa Inc. split into two separate companies; Alcoa Corporation would carry on the production of bauxite, alumina and aluminum products and Arconic would provide high-performance materials and engineered products. As of 2018, Alcoa had revenues of over $11,500,000,000 ($11.5 billion). Hall was the fifth person to be awarded the Perkin Medal for valuable work in applied chemistry by the Society of Chemical Industry (American section) in 1911.

Legacy and Tappan Square: 

After Hall died in 1914, his sizable estate of Alcoa stock was bequeathed to universities and other centers of education around the world, most notably to Oberlin, his alma mater. Hall gave $800,000 to be used for an endowment and upkeep of land that he donated to the college. He also donated $600,000 to be used in the creation and maintenance of a large auditorium on land opposite of the eastern side of the campus to be named after his mother, Sophronia Brooks Hall.

Lastly, Hall left another fund to tend for the trees, shrubs, and grass walks on campus in the center of town, now known as Tappan Square. In 1914, Oberlin College hired the Olmsted Brothers, sons of the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, to produce a campus plan that called for the removal of all buildings from the square, per the wishes of Hall. Oberlin College could not remove the buildings, as requested by Hall’s endowment, until 1927. These endowments and subsequent beautification produced the open green spaces in Tappan Square that are now commonly used for leisure by both the student body and the town.

 

Bibliography:

Alcoa Corporation. (2018). 2017 annual 10-K Form. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1675149/000119312518056314/d502924d10k.htm

A Self-Guided Walking Tour: “Charles Martin Hall and Oberlin’s Aluminum Connection” Oberlin Heritage Center. Accessed July 2, 2020. http://www.oberlinheritagecenter.org/cms/files/File/HallWalkingTourv2.pdf

Binczewski, George J. “The Point of a Monument.” A History of the Aluminum Cap of the Washington Monument. The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society, 1995. https://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/jom/9511/binczewski-9511.html.

“Hall Process Production and Commercialization of Aluminum – National Historic Chemical Landmark.” Production of Aluminum: The Hall-Héroult Process National Historic Chemical Landmark. American Chemical Society. Accessed July 2, 2020. https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/aluminumprocess.html.

“Tappan Square.” Architecture of Oberlin College: Oberlin College Archives. Oberlin College Library, 2015. http://www.oberlinlibstaff.com/omeka_oca/items/show/169.

Young, Rosamond McPherson. Made of Aluminum. New York, New York: D. McKay Co., 1965.

Xu, Claire. “The Age of Alumnium: ALCOA.” The Pennsylvania Center for the Book – ALCOA. The Pennsylvania Center for the Book, 2010. http://pabook2.libraries.psu.edu/palitmap/ALCOA.html.

 

Written 7/2020 by OHC Intern Jacob Selent, Miami University