Augustana began as Augustana Seminary in Chicago in 1860, founded by the Scandinavian Evangelical Lutheran Augustana Synod to educate young men for the Lutheran ministry and to prepare men for teaching. Drawn first by a land offer from the Illinois Central Railroad, it moved to Paxton, Illinois, in 1863, then to Marshall, Wisconsin, in 1869, and with the westward migration of many Norwegians during the Dakota boom, to Beloit in northwest Iowa in 1881. Growing enrollment and Canton citizens' offer of a three-story building brought the academy to Canton in 1884, while the seminary remained in Beloit until 1890. President Anthony G. Tuve organized the Augustana College Association in 1895 to support the school. Its distinguished alumni included novelist Ole E. Rolvaag, physicist Merle A. Tuve, and South Dakota governors Sigurd Anderson and Archie Gubbrud. In 1919 the church reopened the institution at Canton as Canton Lutheran Normal School, later Augustana Academy, and the Augustana Academy Association, formed in 1932, controlled the school until it closed in 1971. The newly formed Norwegian Lutheran Church in America voted in 1971 to merge Augustana College and the Lutheran Normal School in Sioux Falls and to close the Canton campus. The academy's Old Main is an excellent example of Richardsonian Romanesque architecture, marked by massive scale, rough-cut granite, and arched openings. Designed by Omeyer and Thori of St. Paul, the four-story building, 104 feet long and 60 feet wide, was financed by pledges of $10,000 from Augustana College Association members and $5,000 from the synod of the United Norwegian Lutheran Church; ground was broken in late summer 1901, construction began the next year, and the building was dedicated on October 4, 1903. The original Old Main contained classrooms, offices, 25 dormitory rooms, a gymnasium, and a chapel seating about 500 people. With furnishings, it cost $48,492.99. After Augustana Academy closed in 1971, Metro Plains Corporation of St. Paul completed a total renovation in 1995, and the building now contains 21 one-bedroom apartments and five two-bedroom apartments.