In 1910 the UT trustees accepted an offer of $5,000 from the East Tennessee Farmers Convention to erect a convention hall on the agricultural campus. Temple’s daughter, Mary Boyce Temple, also contributed $1,000 toward the construction of the building (and in 1919 gave $25,000 for the establishment of the Oliver P. Temple Foundation to purchase and breed purebred animals and improve plant breeding). The hall served as a meeting place for the annual convention, and the university used it the remainder of the time.
The building was named Oliver P. Temple Hall by the board of trustees in honor of former trustee Oliver Perry Temple, who (with C. W. Charlton) organized the East Tennessee Farmers’ Convention and served as its first president. The building was completed in time for the 1912 meeting of the East Tennessee Farmers Convention at a cost of $12,000. The building, located to the east of the current site of Brehm Hall, was a two-story brick building, 86 feet by 107 feet. In addition to the main convention hall, which accommodated eight hundred, and a large judging pavilion, it provided stalls for exhibit animals and rooms for sectional meetings of the convention. The building was also used by the Animal Husbandry Department to house animals for class demonstrations and student livestock judging. In June 1937 the first annual meeting of the Negro Farmers’ Institute was held in Temple Hall, with speeches by Experiment Station Director A. C. Mooers, Dr. Brooks Drain, and Dr. C. E. Brehm, as well as A. H. Williamson (assistant agent in Negro work) and Miss Mary Woods (Negro home demonstration agent, District III). The building was razed in 1958 for a parking lot.