Genesee Wesleyan Seminary was founded in 1831 by the Genesee Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Lima, New York, south of Rochester. In 1850, it was decided to expand the institution from a seminary to a college. Since the railroad bypassed Lima completely, a new geographical location was sought. The city of Syracuse was looking for a university, as Cornell University was supposed to be built there, but it was built on Ezra Cornell's farmland in Ithaca. In 1869 Genesee College received permission from New York State to move to Syracuse, but Lima obtained a court injunction to block the move and the college remained in Lima until its dissolution in 1875. By that time, however, the court injunction had been lifted by the establishment of a new university on March 24, 1870. At the same time, New York State granted the new Syracuse University its own charter, independent of Genesee College. In 1871, the university opened in rented space downtown. By 1872, the university had developed a set program for three areas of study. In February 1873, Alexander Winchell became Syracuse University's first chancellor and three months later the first building on the new campus was dedicated. The university was founded as a coeducational university. In the College of Liberal Arts, the ratio of male to female students was about even in the 19th century. The College of Fine Arts was predominantly female, and the College of Medicine and the College of Law had a small percentage of women enrolled. Men and women were taught together in the same courses, and many extracurricular activities were coeducational. Syracuse also developed "women-only" organizations and clubs.
