18 The Con at 150 In 1865, Oberlin College instructors John Paul Morgan and George Whipple Steele opened the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Although organized to be financially separate from and independent of Oberlin College, the conservatory affiliated itself with the college within a year. At its 100th anniversary, then- college Provost John W. Kneller wrote, “The history of the conservatory must be distilled from the lives of the thousands of professors and students who climbed the stairs to the rooms over what is now the Co-op Bookstore, who went in and out of the doors of old Warner and Rice, and who now teach and learn in Bibbins and Robertson Halls.” The next issue of the Oberlin Conservatory Magazine, due this summer, will celebrate the conservatory’s 150th anniversary.