Flashback
61 years ago
Let it snow!
Sixty-one years ago, UB students launched a celebration of Buffalo’s winter weather by organizing a Winter Carnival. This event made its first appearance on campus in February 1948, and continued annually into the 1960s, providing plenty of cold-weather fun for UB students and faculty.
Winter Carnival activities included ice skating behind the Tower dorm (now Kimball Tower on the South Campus), a ski fashion show, a jazz concert, and a King and Queen of Winter contest. A beard-growing contest awarded prizes for the longest beard and the most “original set of whiskers.” Cross-country-skiing events featured “car skiing,” with students on skis being towed by a car around the UB campus.
Each Winter Carnival also featured a Snow Ball dance and a snow sculpture contest open to fraternities, sororities and other campus organizations. In 1955, the theme of the snow-sculpture event was a recreation of Sun Valley, and entries included a covered bridge and a swimming pool complete with blue water (frozen, of course) and a female swimmer in a bathing suit. The winning snow sculpture in 1960, as seen in this photograph, was titled “La Mer” and was created by members of Theta Chi.
For nearly two decades, the annual UB Winter Carnival gave students and faculty a good reason to celebrate winter in Buffalo.
—Kathleen Quinlivan, University Libraries
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