Foster Hall to reopen in October as home of GSE

UB continues to reshape its campuses, as Foster Hall — one of the historic granite buildings facing Main Street on the South Campus — is set to reopen in October as the new home for the Graduate School of Education.

As the three-year, $41 million renovation of Foster concludes, faculty and staff are scheduled to start moving on Oct. 9. Students and classes will transition to Foster during the spring semester. The Graduate School of Education is currently located in Baldy Hall on the North Campus.

“We are eagerly anticipating our move to Foster Hall and South Campus,” says Suzanne Rosenblith, dean of the Graduate School of Education. “The building is bright and spacious, and will be a welcoming destination for faculty, staff, students and community members."

The renovation of Foster is notable for a few reasons.

“Renovating Foster Hall as the new home of the Graduate School of Education is another major milestone in fulfilling UB’s comprehensive physical plan’s goals for the South Campus,” says Laura Hubbard, vice president for finance and administration. 

“GSE’s programs and mission are a key component of the vision that South Campus be a hub for civic engagement in an urban setting,” Hubbard says.

The reopening of Foster also is a significant milestone for revitalizing South Campus as a campus for UB’s professional schools, adds Kelly Hayes McAlonie, director of campus planning.

“And with Foster complete, we can now say that the historic buildings that face Main Street, including Hayes and Crosby halls, have been restored — another important goal of our comprehensive master plan,” she says.

It’s also a homecoming, of sorts, for the Graduate School of Education.

Opened in 1921, Foster Hall was designed by the acclaimed architecture firm McKim, Mead & White and was the first academic building constructed by the university on its Main Street campus, thanks to a $500,000 donation from philanthropist Orrin Elliott Foster. The building first housed the Department of Chemistry, then the Graduate School of Education until its move to the North Campus in 1973. The building most recently housed classroom and research space for the School of Dental Medicine.

The renovation that began in 2022 revived the historic exterior of the building, which included restoring the Main Street entrance that had functioned as a loading dock since a previous improvement project at Foster in the early 1980s, Hayes McAlonie says. Two symmetrical ramps were also added at the new Main Street entrance to fit the historic character of the South Campus while meeting standards for the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Inside, the building’s extensive laboratory space has been redesigned into general academic space for the school’s administration, faculty and students.

The first floor has a large gathering space for school-wide functions, large classes or other university events, as well as a glass-enclosed space to be used for special events or as a conference room.

A central grand staircase with glass railing connects all four building floors. Each floor has lounge space and learning landscapes for students, faculty and staff, while the second- and third-floor corridors were designed to function like an art gallery.

The firm Mitchell Giurgola served as the architectural consultant for the project.

An emphasis was placed on drawing in natural light through the building’s oversized, double-hung windows.

“The windows in the building are very large and every effort was made to maximize the natural light in the corridors,” Hayes McAlonie says. “The choice of light wood and white walls with blue accents adds to the lightness of the building.”

Renovations at Foster also included transitioning to a thermal-energy network on the South Campus, a cleaner, high-efficiency energy hub that will help UB reduce its carbon footprint.

A grand opening ceremony and ribbon-cutting will be held at a later date.