On This Day, May 11, 1846, University of Buffalo Relocated From Allentown; Today it Has Returned!

By Bill Zimmerman
Buffalo Rising Online
May 11, 2007

Imagine if the original plan for the University at Buffalo had worked. In 1845, the now world-famous university was supposed to find its beginnings in Buffalo’s Allentown neighborhood.

These days it seems the college's soul actually never left the quaint neighborhood. Did you happen to see Cozumel’s Cinco de Mayo party, which took up seven streets of parking last weekend? Very “City Center” stuff. Or, have you ever been to Neitzche’s -- anytime, really -- but particularly on any Saturday afternoon for an open Celtic Jam? (you are cordially invited next Saturday anytime after four!).

Have you ever stopped into either John or Christie’s respective Allen Street book shops, or visited the countless other destinations? The street, and the neighborhood, explode with the constant and vibrant feel of the merging worlds of art and academia.

While UB’s Main Street campus is exemplary among world campuses, it is at the inconvenient end of Buffalo’s geography. Why there? Why not Allentown? One can only imagine what could have been.

The cold design of UB’s Amherst Campus breaks ritual with over 2000 years of academic landscape tradition by voiding (but for a 1960’s Homeland Security assessment decision against) a central campus courtyard, or any inkling of democratic open space for student gatherings. Given UB's recent need to reach for some soul, maybe the university is still reaching for a place like Allentown. Maybe that could be its heart. It is in fact where it was suppose to break ground in 1845.

Yet, on this day, May 11, 1846, UB broke ground elsewhere, against the Allentown plan. The wished-for plan was to center within Allentown. “College Street" was supposed to be its western marker (like you never wondered why it was named that). The other borders in the proposed plan feel at Delaware and Franklin to the east and North and Allen to the south end... where the college parties would brew and stew, and yet still do!

And so we learn, that you cannot tell a ghost what to do. UB’s spirit, over 150 years later, parties on where its source of inspiration began. Next time you're at “the Pink,” think about that.

Registration for UB’s first classes in Allentown were suspended due to an 1846 City of Buffalo financial crash, and student patrons were told to wait for the new locations on Seneca and Washington streets, opened by the New York Legislature with the authorization to grant any degrees whatsoever (similar to many of today’s wary online universities). The School of Medicine was first to employ itself, and encouraged an even more well-rounded and expanding welcome to other degrees.

Millard Fillmore was the university’s first chancellor. As a lawyer and a congressman, he was stoutfully worthy of this leading position, if only an honorary role. The campus at Washington and Seneca was eventually relocated to Buffalo’s far northeast end at Main and Bailey. Of the 66 students in its first graduating class, UB unleashed 18 qualified doctors upon the city.

The soul of UB keeps coming back to the city and, over the decades, has consumed news pages deliberating on waterfront possibilities and other Main Street options.

Currently UB’s refueled ambitions are putting its money where its soul always has been—UB is back home in Allentown at the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. Millions upon millions of dollars are fueling into this Allentown “side-hood” called BNMC, which now hosts the Super Computer and the UB Center for Excellence, among a score of new building inspirations. There’s even a spirit in the air that the subway linking the two locations will finally prove itself amiably worthy of itself.

If we can embrace the BNMC, and UB’s vibrant and growing role there, then let us embrace a hearty welcome and the return of the university to Allentown, from which it sprang.

Welcome home, UB, to Buffalo’s city civic center, our historic Allentown.

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