During the economic stagnation from the 1940s to the 1950s the city discovered and established its vocation as an educational and university center. In 1942 the state government expropriated the Monte Alegre Farm, an important coffee farm from the Schmidt family of German immigrants, and transformed it into an agricultural practical school. Several new buildings and houses for the professors were constructed on a land which held before tens of thousands of coffee plants. The new school was very well planned and urbanized and many trees were planted to provide shadow and give it a pleasant atmosphere. But the agricultural school never achieved a significant development and it was closed in 1951. A longstanding dream of the population of Ribeirão Preto was to have a university and in 1952 the old farm was donated to the University of São Paulo for the creation of a medical school, which was the first school of its campus at Ribeirão Preto.