Old Main, Augustana College
Old Main, Augustana College is a historic building located in Rock Island, Illinois, United States. It was built between 1884 and 1893 on the campus of Augustana College, and it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.
History
Augustana College was established in Chicago in 1860 to educate Swedish immigrants by the Scandinavian Evangelical Lutheran Augustana Synod, now part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The school moved to Paxton, Illinois in 1863 and then to Rock Island in 1875.Old Main was constructed from 1884 to 1893. It was dedicated as Memorial Hall in 1889 although it was still incomplete. The building's design was based on a similar building at the University of Uppsala in Sweden, which was the alma mater of many of the college's early faculty. The dome, however, was not part of the building's original design. The building in Uppsala features a crenelated octagon-shaped tower. A dome was believed to be more American, and so it was chosen to top the building. The original cost to build the building is estimated at $75,000. A third of the money was donated by a local industrialist, Philander Lathrop Cable. Cable Hall, on the second floor of the building, was restored to look like a 19th-century classroom.
A $13 million renovation of the building was begun in July 2010. The stone on the building's exterior was washed and tuck pointed, and the old windows were replaced. The building's dome, which was painted metal, was covered in a copper that has a pre-treated patina to give a weathered, bluish-green look.