Rev. Daniel Steele, a former Genesee College president, served as the first administrative leader of Syracuse until its chancellor was appointed. The university opened in September 1871 in rented space downtown. Judge George F. Comstock, a member of the new university's board of trustees, had offered the school of farmland on a hillside to the southeast of the city center. Comstock intended Syracuse University and the hill 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."