St. John’s, the oldest military academy in Wisconsin, was founded as a boys’ preparatory school in 1844 when Sidney T. Smythe, a student at Nashotah House, reopened an abandoned Delafield schoolhouse for its first students. Dr. Smythe graduated from Nashotah in 1886 and devoted the rest of his life to building the academy. Its main campus buildings were designed to complement one another in English Gothic style, with serrated roofs, towers, and stone battlements resembling old European castles. An influential educational force in the Midwest, it drew students from many states and foreign countries. Its adoption of military education was intended to emphasize quality, instill self-discipline, and provide team spirit and leadership qualities, and together with its original religious intentions this philosophy represented a distinctive side of the American spirit.