Old Main, Knox College

The brick building known as Old Main on the Knox College campus in Galesburg is one of the most historically charged structures in Illinois. On October seventh, eighteen fifty-eight, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas held the fifth of their seven famous debates on a platform built against its north wall. Lincoln was running for Senate and losing; Douglas won that race, but the debate sharpened Lincoln's national profile and helped carry him to the White House two years later.

Old Main was completed in eighteen fifty-seven and is the last surviving site of the Lincoln-Douglas debates still standing in its original form. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in nineteen sixty-one, the only one of the seven debate sites to hold that distinction.