The University at Buffalo's North Campus is located almost exactly in the center of the town of Amherst, NY approximately 3.5 miles from South Campus on the northeast edge of Buffalo, NY. In the mid-1960s, the University was quickly outgrowing its 178-acre campus which was once the grounds for the Erie County Almshouse and County Hospital. After a few unsuccessful attempts to acquire land for a new campus in downtown Buffalo, the University looked to the surrounding suburbs. Then governor of New York Nelson Rockefeller helped the University acquire 2,000 acres in Amherst, and in October, 1968 the University began the intensive planning for the newly-acquired land.

In July 1970, the State University Construction Fund and architectural design firm Sasaki, Dawson, Demay and Associates, Inc. published The Campus Plan in two volumes, which outlined in great detail the vision for the new campus.

Many of the South Campus building names were relocated to new structures on the University's North Campus in the 1970s and 1980s. The structures on South Campus were then renamed.