UB, 1900-1920: The Main Street purchase

Attorney Charles P. Norton, a native Buffalonian who helped found the law school, became UB's acting chancellor in 1905 and chancellor in 1908. During Norton's tenure, UB bought the 150-acre Buffalo Plains site on north Main Street, later to become the university's home.

Norton bequeathed his entire estate to the university, providing funds for a student union building and for the endowment of UB's highest award, the Chancellor's Medal, presented annually since 1925 to an outstanding citizen of Buffalo.

The university's first liberal arts curriculum was developed when the American Medical Association required at least one preliminary year of liberal-arts work as part of physician education. The courses were instituted in 1913 and were awarded departmental status in 1915.

That same year, the Women's Educational and Industrial Union of Buffalo offered its building on Niagara Square as the home for the new, full-scale arts college, if the university could raise a $100,000 endowment within a year. This challenge was met through a $250,000 contribution from Mrs. Seymour H. Knox and her family in honor of her late husband. The College of Arts and Sciences, authorized by the State Department of Education in 1919, had 600 students and 31 full- and part-time faculty within one year. -P.D.