In 1904, Sister Leonarda became the Provincial Superior of the Sisters of St. Francis, and thus a new principal was appointed. Sister Paula Tierney continued the high academic rigor of the school, and during her tenure, she introduced the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This was the beginning of a strong service-oriented component to the curriculum. Beginning in 1901, the school began accepting boarders so that girls from outside of the city could receive a Catholic education.
The “Golden Age” of Buffalo came to a glittering, gilded climax in the summer of 1901 with the Pan American Exposition, a world’s fair designed to celebrate the relationship between North, Central, and South America. The fairgrounds were located in Olmsted’s Delaware Park and boasted beautiful new temporary buildings created exclusively for use at the fair. Only two buildings designed for permanence, the Buffalo History Museum and Albright-Knox Art Museum remain from the fairgrounds. The spectacle of the fair came to a halt when President William McKinley was assassinated during his visit to Buffalo. Later in the decade, more Buffalo landmarks arose. The Larkin Soap building was built in 1904 and designed by renowned architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. The Larkin Building is still considered an internationally important piece of architectural history. The first Statler Hotel and Pierce-Arrow Motor Car factory were built. Buffalo was a center of social change and hosted a meeting of the National Association of Colored Women in 1901, led by pioneering civil rights activist, Mary Burnett Talbert. Four years later, prominent Black Americans, including W.E.B. Dubois, met in Buffalo to establish the Niagara Movement, a predecessor to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, an organization dedicated to working for the rights of Black Americans.
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