The first Red Cross-related organization in the Buffalo Area, the Charity Organization Society of Buffalo, met on June 14, 1909 at the Ansley Wilcox house on Delaware Avenue. This organization had an institutional membership with the American National Red Cross. By the beginning of World War I, the Buffalo War Relief Committee and the Red Cross Work Rooms Committee were established. These two organizations merged on October 18, 1915 to form the Buffalo War Relief & Red Cross Work Room Committee. This organization raised funds for the war effort, knitted socks and rolled bandages for the fighting men, and supported the women and men who worked in the work rooms in the Buffalo factories. Then July 7, 1916 at 4 p.m. in the conference room of the Old Iroquois hotel, the Buffalo War Relief & Red Cross Work Room Committee was dissolved and the Greater Buffalo Chapter was chartered. The by-laws were approved at the first annual meeting on October 15, 1917. The work it did was very similar to what it had done before the charter was signed. The first Chapter house was in the Root Building at 86 West Chippewa St. By April 1917, the office in the Root Building was too crowded, so the Chapter moved to the Niagara Life Building and had some additional space at 776 Delaware. By national mandate, the Red Cross is to aid military families in the United States and abroad. To fulfill its wartime obligations, the Greater Buffalo Chapter set up Base Hospital 23 in Vittel, France, and set up a local dressing depot in the Daniels House at 787 Delaware Ave. After World War I, Buffalo, like many other cities, suffered through the Spanish Influenza epidemic. Therefore, the chapter continued to grow, forcing another move to the Curtis Building at 210 Franklin St. and 396 Delaware. In the spring of 1925, Chapter headquarters moved yet again to 268 Main St. Various other houses in the Buffalo area were used by some of the Red Cross departments over the years as well. It was not until August, 1941 that the Red Cross offices found a permanent home at 786 Delaware Avenue when Mrs. Carolyn Tripp Clement, the widow of Stephen Merrell Clement, deeded her twenty-room mansion to the Red Cross. This gray Medina sandstone and Indiana limestone structure was designed in 1910 by noted Buffalo architect Edward B. Green. The tennis and squash recreation building used by the Knox, Goodyear, and Clement families was purchased with money from the sale of Spaulding and Osgood properties that had been bequeathed to the Chapter. Therefore, the building was called the Spaulding Building and the large hall inside was designated Osgood hall. The Littell Building on Summer Street was added to the Red Cross campus in 1968, and the Blood Center was built on the front of the Spaulding Building in 1978-1979. In 1941, the Buffalo Chapter was assigned the task of being the Regional Blood collection center for the military. From 1941-1945, this blood collection site was in the Ellicott Square Building in downtown Buffalo. After World War II the program was discontinued, but in 1950 the blood program was restarted for civilian use. The first floor of the Clement Building was remodeled to accommodate the Blood Center. Linoleum flooring and white wood walls were put up to preserve the fine parquet floors and hand-rubbed walls of the Clement residence. Then in the early 1970s a study estimated that the Blood Center would fail to meet the public demand for blood by early 1978. Therefore, a major capital finding campaign was started, and by 1977 enough funds had been raised to start designing and building the new Blood Center. By 1979, the Regional Blood Center was working out of its new facility. In 1991, control of Blood Center operations was transferred from the Chapter to the American National Red Cross. Two Greater Buffalo Chapter board members went on to become members of the American National Red Cross Board of Governors. Albert Sanders was the first, and Paul A. Schoellkopf, Jr. was the second. Over the years, several branches were established to help provide services to out-lying communities in the area covered by the Greater Buffalo Chapter. Many of these branches now serve only as blood collection sites; only the Tonawanda and the Olean branches have full services. As of 1991, the cut-off date of this accession, the Greater Buffalo Chapter of the American Red Cross had the following departments: administration, branch relations, financial, personnel, public relations, health & safety services, service to military families, emergency & disaster services, and volunteer services.