Wilson Bruce Evans House

Wilson Bruce Evans House
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
U.S. National Historic Landmark
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Location	33 E. Vine St., Oberlin, Ohio
Coordinates	41°17′19″N 82°12′59″W / 41.28861°N 82.21639°W / 41.28861; -82.21639
Area	less than one acre
Built	1856 (1856)
Architectural style	Italianate
NRHP reference No.	80003143
Significant dates
Added to NRHP	April 16, 1980[1]
Designated NHL	December 9, 1997[2]

Wilson Bruce Evans House is a historic house at 33 East Vine Street in Oberlin, Ohio, United States. Completed in 1856, it served a major stop on the Underground Railroad, with its builders, Wilson Bruce Evans and Henry Evans, participating the 1858 Oberlin-Wellington Rescue, a celebrated rescue of a slave. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1997.^[2][3]

The Wilson Bruce Evans House is located south of downtown Oberlin, on the south side of East Vine Street opposite Martin Luther King Jr. Park, a small public park behind Oberlin City Hall. The house is a two-story brick structure, covered by a hip roof. The roof has extended eaves studded with decorative brackets. A single-story porch extends across the front, its shed roof supported by square brick piers. The interior is finished with high-quality woodwork, milled and shaped by Wilson Bruce Evans and Henry Evans. The house was built 1854-56 by the Evans brothers, two free African-Americans, and was occupied by Wilson Bruce Evans and his family. At the time of its landmark designation in 1997, it was still in the hands of their descendants.^[3]

The Evans house was the home of Wilson Bruce Evans, a prominent African-American abolitionist and early benefactor of Oberlin College, the first college to admit students of color. Evans rose to national attention after his importance in the 1858 Oberlin-Wellington Rescue, one of the events that challenged the controversial Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.^[4] Although Evans was not an outspoken abolitionist like his colleagues Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, Evans was cited as a man who "put justice above his own safety." The house was a frequent stop for travelers on the Underground Railroad such as Harriet Tubman.^[5]

• List of Underground Railroad sites
• List of National Historic Landmarks in Ohio

• National Park Service article about the house
• Oberlin College information about the house
• Wilson Bruce Evans Home Historical Society Website