“Augustana – The School on Wheels”

Augustana was founded as Augustana Seminary in Chicago in 1860 by the Scandinavian Evangelical Lutheran Augustana Synod. The school’s purpose was ‘to educate young men for

the holy ministry in the Lutheran Church…(and) to prepare men for the profession of teaching.' The school moved many times before settling in Canton. Attracted by a generous land offer from the Illinois Central Railroad Augustana moved to Paxton, Illinois in 1863, then to Marshall, Wisconsin in 1869. Encouraged by the westward migration of many Norwegians during the Dakota boom the school moved 400 miles from Marshall to northwest Iowa at Beloit in 1881.

Augustana settled in Canton in 1890 due to growing enrollment and the offer of a three-story building from the citizens. The seminary remained in Beloit until 1890.

In 1917 the newly formed Norwegian Lutheran Church in America voted to merge Augustana College and the Lutheran Normal School in Sioux Falls and to close the Canton campus. In 1919 the Church re-opened the institution at Canton with the name of Canton Lutheran Normal School, which later became Augustana Academy and operated as a high school of the Lutheran Church. The Augustana Academy Association was formed in 1932 and assumed control of the school until its closing in 1971.

The Old Main building of the Academy is an excellent example of Richardsonian Romanesque architecture with its massive scale, rough cut granite, and arched openings. Designed by Omeyer and Thori of St. Paul it is a four-story building, 104 feet long and 60 feet wide.

Havig received pledges totaling $10,000 from Augustana College Association members and

$5,000 from the synod of the United Norwegian Lutheran Church, ground was broken in the late summer of 1901. Actual construction was begun the next year and the building was dedicated on October 4, 1903. This was the second building on the campus. The original Old Main housed classrooms, offices, 25 dormitory rooms, a gymnasium, and a chapel that would seat about 500 people. Total cost of the structure, with furnishings, was $48,492.99.

Augustana Academy was closed in 1971 and a total renovation of the building was completed in 1995 by the MetroPlains Corporation of St. Paul. It now houses 21 one bedroom apartments and five two bedroom apartments.

Lincoln County, 1) east of Canton; 2) west side of Campus