Founded in Chicago in 1860 as Augustana Seminary by the Scandinavian Evangelical Lutheran Augustana Synod, Augustana was established to educate young men for the Lutheran ministry and for teaching. Drawn by a generous land offer from the Illinois Central Railroad, it moved to Paxton, Illinois, in 1863, then to Marshall, Wisconsin, in 1869, and during the westward migration of many Norwegians in the Dakota boom it moved again in 1881 to Beloit in northwest Iowa. Rising 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, who served from 1890 to 1916, 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 1917 the newly formed Norwegian Lutheran Church in America voted to merge Augustana College with the Lutheran Normal School in Sioux Falls and close the Canton campus, but in 1919 the church reopened the institution in Canton as Canton Lutheran Normal School, which later became Augustana Academy and operated as a Lutheran Church high school. The Augustana Academy Association, formed in 1932, controlled the school until it closed in 1971. Its Old Main building, designed by Omeyer and Thori of St. Paul, is a Richardsonian Romanesque structure of massive scale, rough-cut granite, and arched openings. The four-story building, 104 feet long and 60 feet wide, was funded in part by $10,000 in pledges 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. Old Main originally contained classrooms, offices, 25 dormitory rooms, a gymnasium, and a chapel seating about 500 people, and the structure with furnishings cost $48,492.99. After the academy closed in 1971, the building was fully renovated in 1995 by the Metro Plains Corporation of St. Paul and now contains 21 one-bedroom apartments and five two-bedroom apartments.