Luther College opened in September 1861 in a vacant parsonage at Halfway Creek, Wisconsin, near La Crosse, with 11 students after the Norwegian Synod chose Decorah as its site but could not find adequate facilities there for the first year. Its main purpose was to educate students for theological study and pastoral ministry in Lutheran congregations founded by immigrants from Norway, though from the start it also welcomed students preparing for other professions. The Synod appointed the Rev. Peter Laurentius Larsen as president and professor and the Rev. Friedrich A. Schmidt as his colleague. The Rev. Ulrik Vilhelm Koren, a pioneer pastor in northeastern Iowa, played a key role in the college's formation and development by securing an option on 32 acres in West Decorah for the future campus, a site the Synod approved. In the summer of 1862 the college moved to Decorah, occupying temporary quarters in the Otis Building at the southeast corner of Winnebago and Main streets, where it remained from 1862 to 1865 until the first Main was completed on the West Decorah campus. The building held kitchen and dining facilities, living quarters for stewards, classrooms, an apartment for President Larsen and his family, a small office, and sleeping rooms including a large room for 25 students, while Prof. Schmidt and his family lived nearby in Judge Griswold's former home. Thirty-four students registered in the first year at Decorah, following a tightly regulated daily schedule from 5:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. with fixed times for worship, classes, meals, study, and breaks, a prescribed curriculum without electives, and one monthly day free for cleaning rooms and halls. As enrollment rose to 51 in 1863, the Synod bought the lot west of the Otis Building and added an annex for student housing, built with bricks from a kiln on the West Decorah campus. Students called the annex Huttetu, borrowing a phrase from a Norwegian nursery rhyme, and complained that it was cold in winter and hot in warmer months. On October 14, 1865, the Norwegian Synod dedicated the first Main building on Luther College's permanent campus in West Decorah in a major celebration for immigrant Norwegian-Americans, with attendance estimates reaching as high as six thousand.