Portrait Bust of Dr. Dudley Peter Allen (1852-1915)

Dr. Dudley Peter Allen (1852-1915) was a third generation doctor and one of the first physicians in the country to specialize in surgery. An 1875 graduate of Oberlin College who had grown up in Oberlin, he earned his MD from Harvard Medical School in 1879 and studied further in Europe. He then returned to Oberlin to work with his father, Dr. Dudley Allen, who had been practicing medicine with his father since 1837.

Dr. Dudley Peter Allen was widely renowned as a brilliant, skilled surgeon and teacher. He founded the department of surgery at Western Reserve Medical College (now Case Western Reserve University) and taught there from 1884-1910.

Fifteen years into his career, at age 42, Dr. Allen married 29-year-old Elisabeth Severance on August 24, 1894. That same year he became a Trustee of Oberlin College and founded the Cleveland Medical Library Association.

An avid traveler and connoisseur of fine arts, Dr. and Mrs. Allen collected artwork, especially from the Far East. Together they established the Allen Memorial Art Museum which today is ranked as one of the best college art museum in the United States.

Their family home on Euclid Avenue in Cleveland became the first Health Museum. His family home in Oberlin in now a college dormitory, Allencroft.