University Hill, Syracuse

As students make up the majority (around eighty percent) of the residents, census data might appear odd when comparing other neighborhoods.

As part of the negotiations that brought the former Genesee College from Lima, New York to Syracuse, George F. Comstock, a member of the university's board of trustees, offered the school 50 acres (20 ha) of farmland in this area of the city.

In January 1871, Bishop Jesse Peck, the first chairman of the Board of Trustees, described what was, in effect, the university's first master plan: a scheme for the construction of seven new buildings on Comstock's hillside, each to be dedicated to a different academic discipline.

While the Hall of Languages was being built on his old property, George Comstock purchased 200 acres (81 ha) of the Stevens farm to the north of University Place.

By 1872, Comstock had deeded Walnut Park, the centerpiece of his new "Highlands" subdivision, to the City, and successfully parceled out residential lots to the local elite.

From the beginning, Comstock intended Syracuse University and the Highlands to develop as an integrated whole; a contemporary account described the latter as "a beautiful town...springing up on the hillside and a community of refined and cultivated membership...established near the spot which will soon be the center of a great and beneficent educational institution."

Together with the Hall of Languages, these first buildings formed the basis for the "Old Row," a grouping which, along with its companion Lawn, established one of Syracuse's most enduring images.

The emphatically linear organization of these buildings along the brow of the hill follows a tradition of American campus planning which dates to the construction of the "Yale Row" in the 1790s.