On April 14, 1950, faculty and students of the College of Law moved into the new building on Cumberland Avenue that was designed and built for law school purposes. The dedication brochure promised that “[w]ithin its Collegiate Gothic walls of brick and native Tennessee stone will be found both beauty and utility.” Tennessee Supreme Court Justice Hamilton S. Burnett summarized the awe in which the new facility was held: “One cannot walk through this building—the library, the moot court room, classrooms, and all—without walking straighter, without feeling proud of our profession and our state.” The Knoxville Journal dedicated a full-page pictorial feature to the building. The building was air-conditioned in 1964.
Prior to moving to the new building, the law school had been housed in Tennessee Hall on West Main Avenue. The Municipal Technical Advisory Service and the Bureau of Sociological Research were also initially located in the new facility but moved into other quarters in 1965.
On November 15, 1966, the building was named the George C. Taylor Law Center in honor of George Caldwell Taylor, a federal judge for the Eastern District of Tennessee, former member of the board of trustees, and president of his 1908 law class. Also in 1966 Dean Warner noted in the UT-Lawyer that the board of trustees had approved the plan to expand the facility and that architects were working on the plans. He added that a three-story parking garage was also planned at the rear of the law building. An annex connected to the Taylor Building on two floors was completed in 1971 (plus renovations to the Taylor Building), but the annex was poorly integrated with the older building.
When the Law Complex was renovated and expanded in 1997, the Taylor Building was incorporated into the complex as the George C. Taylor Wing, and the 1971 addition to the building (now Blount Hall) was separated for use by other units of the university.