Old Main had been standing for just over twenty years by the time Carl Sandburg was born in 1878.

The Knox College Board of Trustees celebrated the completion of Main College, as it was then called, on July 7, 1857. A public dinner was held to honor the opening of the large new building.
When the citizens of Galesburg climbed to the upper floor of the building, they could look out over the town and marvel at its progress. There was no Knox County Courthouse in College Park.

The women’s hall across the park had been built at the same time. It was later named Whiting Hall. Erecting a building for female students was a clear indication that Knox would be a co-educational institution. Within a few years the young women were taking classes in the Main College building.

The Knox trustees had spent a quarter of the College’s endowment of $400,000 to add the facilities. President Jonathan Blanchard first hired a Chicago architectural firm, Olmstead & Nicholson to design a main building for the campus. Their architectural suggestions were too extravagant so the firm was fired.

A Peoria architect by the name of Charles Ulricson was then hired and he quickly produced drawings with satisfied Blanchard.

Ulricson came to America in 1835 from Sweden. It is believed he found a job as a draftsman in the New York firm of Town and Davis. They were the leading architects in the country during the period before the Civil War.

Ulricson was given free use of the company library. He also gained experience in engineering as well as the architectural revival of Greek, Gothic and Tuscan styles. He was also a practicing Mason and believed in the use of esoteric mathematics for design characteristics of buildings.

The Knox trustees had expected a plain building. They received matching wings, towers, curved windows and other forms of decoration on the exterior. On the interior, they received Masonic calculations in the measurement and decoration of the building.

The brick used for the construction of the edifice was a bright shade of red, the window and door surrounds were painted white and the foundation was constructed of blue sandstone from Aurora, Illinois.

The following year Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas debated on a platform erected on the east side of Main College. That series of debates across the state for the senatorial campaign was of historical and political importance. Knox College’s building is now listed on the National List of Historic Places.

Old Main was a one-of-a-kind building. It still is.