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In 1905, UB was without a chancellor and had no central campus. When no one else was interested, Buffalo attorney and Law School founder Charles P. Norton agreed to assume the position. When Norton learned that Erie County was interested in relocating its almshouse and would sell 106 acres for use as UB’s campus, he promoted the site as “no finer location could be secured which would adequately allow for the future expansion of the university.”

Many laughed at the idea that the university could ever need that much space, thinking, instead, that a block or two around the medical and dental buildings on High and Goodrich streets would be sufficient. Norton thought otherwise, and by 1909 he had raised the purchase price of $54,300—a bargain at about $500 an acre. While some donations were as large as $1,000, most of the funding came from gifts of a dollar or less delivered personally to Norton’s office.

In 1919, UB purchased the rest of what is now the South Campus and was granted a one-year extension to fulfill the terms of the original purchase. UB had land for a campus, but no money for buildings. With time running out, Norton presided over a mock groundbreaking in June 1920 and told the assembled guests, “We have planted an acorn, which when it grows God alone knows the fruit thereof.” A month later, the Orin Foster family donated $500,000 for a hall of chemistry and the following year the construction of what would become Foster Hall began on a site once occupied by horse and cattle barns for the former county facility, as seen in this 1888 photograph.

—John Edens and Shonnie FinneganUniversity Archives