April 21, 1999		Historian Geoffrey Blodgett to Deliver Oberlin College Honors Day Address Media Contact: Marci Janas
	Geoffrey Blodgett		OBERLIN, OHIO--Historian Geoffrey Blodgett will deliver the address at Oberlin College's annual Honors Day Assembly. The free, public event takes place at 4:35 p.m. Monday, May 10, in Warner Concert Hall, located in the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music at the corner of Professor and Lorain streets. The title of Blodgett's talk is "Oberlin Vs. Oberlin." Blodgett received his bachelor of arts degree from Oberlin in 1953, and is the Robert S. Danforth professor of history at the College. He has been a member of Oberlin's faculty since 1960. This year's event marks Oberlin's 59th Honors Assembly. The deans of Oberlin's College of Arts and Sciences and Conservatory of Music will award student prizes, and new members of honor societies (Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi and Pi Kappa Lambda) and fellowship winners will be recognized. Professor of Organ Haskell Thomson will play, as prelude, J. S. Bach's Prelude in E-flat Major (BWV 552/1). The postlude, also by Bach, will be Fugue in E-flat Major (BWV 552/2). Thomson has been a member of the Conservatory faculty since 1961. Geoffrey Blodgett is an expert on American architectural history. He is currently at work on a biography of the architect Cass Gilbert (1859-1934) tentatively titled Cass Gilbert, Architect to a Trusting Nation. Gilbert, who designed the United States Supreme Court building and several state capitols, also designed five Oberlin College buildings: Finney Chapel, Cox Administration Building, the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Bosworth Hall, and the original Allen Memorial Hospital (owned at one time by the College) In addition to publishing numerous scholarly articles on architectural history, Blodgett is also the author of Oberlin Architecture, College and Town: A Guide to its Social History (Kent State University Press, 1985). He is a noted local historian, and served as chair of the Oberlin City Historic Preservation Commission from 1974 until 1980. Other publications by Blodgett reflect his expertise in American political history and include the book The Gentle Reformers: Massachusetts Democrats in the Cleveland Era (Harvard University Press, 1966). Upon graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Oberlin, Blodgett served two years with the United States Navy in the Pacific Fleet. In 1956 he entered Harvard University and received his Ph.D. in 1961. Among his awards is the Kerr Prize from the New York State Historical Association in 1993. Blodgett is a member of the Organization of American Historians, the Western Reserve Society of Architectural Historians and honorary trustee of the Oberlin Historical Improvement Organization. He and his wife Jane live in Oberlin.