Why Is There a Pillsbury Academy in Owatonna? How a Minneapolis Miller’s Gifts Renamed a Baptist School

Drive an hour south of Minneapolis and you will find a campus in Owatonna with the Pillsbury name on it. It has nothing to do with flour sacks and everything to do with one man’s checkbook. In the 1880s, George A. Pillsbury, the miller who had served as mayor of Minneapolis, kept a struggling Baptist school afloat, built much of its campus, and watched the trustees rename it in his honor.

He never saw the English manor house at 100 East 22nd Street, which his grandson Charles S. Pillsbury completed in 1916. But the story of the school shows the family habit that made such a house possible: a fortune treated as something to give away.

How did the school get its start?

According to the 1910s county history History of Rice and Steele Counties, Minnesota, the school was founded by the Minnesota Baptist State Convention and opened in September 1877 as Minnesota Academy. It was a preparatory school, meant to ready students for college.

When did George Pillsbury step in?

The same county history says that in 1885 Pillsbury “began to take a vital interest” in the institution and made the first of a series of generous gifts. In October 1886 the Baptist State Convention voted unanimously to change the name to Pillsbury Academy as a token of esteem.

Between 1885 and 1892, the book says, he gave the school Pillsbury Hall, the Academy building, Music Hall, the Drill Hall and a central heating plant. It adds that he cleared the school’s current-expense debts several times and left it an endowment fund in his will, one that could be used only as an endowment.

What did he actually build?

The county history gives specifics. The Academy building went up in 1889: 122 feet long, three stories above the basement, with a tower 144 feet high. Music Hall followed in 1892, a two-story brick building 40 by 80 feet, which the book calls Grecian in style, with four Ionic columns on its facade.

A boys’ dormitory came later. In 1900, the book says, Owatonna’s William H. Kelly started the fundraising with a generous offer, and the building opened in 1904. The Baptist State Convention named it Kelly Hall in October 1905. The county history describes it as a brick structure 160 feet long.

What happened to the campus afterward?

Wikipedia’s article on the school traces the later names. It became Pillsbury Military Academy in 1920. In 1957, after a dispute over control of the Baptist convention, the academy closed and was reconstituted as Pillsbury Baptist Bible College, which closed on Dec. 31, 2008. The campus later reopened as Camp Pillsbury in 2014.

Five buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Pillsbury Academy Campus Historic District: Old Main (1889), Music Hall (1892), Jefts Hall (1910-11), Lindsay Hall (1913-14) and a heating plant (1893). The listing was added in 1987, according to Wikipedia’s article on the college, which cites the National Park Service nomination form. The sources differ on names. The 1910s history lists Kelly Hall and an academy building, while the register lists Old Main and other halls, so we have kept each source’s wording rather than force them to match.

Why does it matter to the mansion?

George’s generosity set a pattern. Read how the family’s money and civic duty shaped the next generation in the Pillsbury family story and the mansion’s owners. For another thread of Pillsbury giving in Minneapolis, see our guide to Pillsbury House, the settlement house that carried the family name.

You can still stand in the house his grandson built. Join a guided visit through the Pillsbury Club’s experiences and tours, or plan your visit for hours and reservations.

Keep reading: Why did Governor John S. Pillsbury pay for a $150,000 hall of science at the University of Minnesota?