Two structures have been named Sophronia Strong Hall. The first building so designated was the main house of the Cowan/Briscoe estate, purchased by UT to provide a site for building the women’s dormitory specified in Benjamin Rush Strong’s will. The second was the Sophronia Strong Hall residence hall built in 1925. When the permanent building was constructed, the Cowan/Briscoe House was known as Sophronia Strong Hall West.
In 1915 the university was notified that it was the recipient of a major bequest from wealthy financier Benjamin Rush Strong, the father-in-law of Anna Monroe Gilcrist Strong, who had been on the home economics faculty from 1902 to 1906, and the brother of Robert N. Strong, who had been a UT professor of mathematics. B. R. Strong’s will provided that his sizable gift to the university would be used in part to build a women’s residence hall to be named for his mother, with a flower garden to be planted adjacent to it in memory of his mother, Sophronia Marrs (1817–1867), who had married Dr. Joseph C. Strong, a Knoxville physician, when she was 16 and who had had 12 children.
In 1924 the trustees approved constructing Sophronia Strong Hall and the University Cafeteria, at a cost of $142,926. The building (which housed 50 women) and the cafeteria opened in 1925. In 1939, partially with Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works funds, five wings were added, with residence hall space for approximately 250 women.
Each of the five new units was named for one of the first five coeds of the institution. Four of the five units were ready at the beginning of the 1940 academic year, and the fifth (Mattie Kain) unit opened in September 1940. The five additions were collectively valued at approximately $425,000 and offered five types of rooms, ranging from single rooms with private baths to the more traditional double rooms. Each unit of the building had a large reception room, with kitchenette, and there was a telephone on each floor. The University Cafeteria was moved to the new building, and the 1925 building was then remodeled and used for sorority chapter rooms in 1940.
The cafeteria, Sophie’s Place, was moved from its original location in South College to Sophronia Strong Hall, opening in 1925 as a unit of the College of Home Economics and as the only university food service facility. It was extremely popular, and for a time was open to the public on Sundays, drawing large crowds. It was modified and kept up to date, and when UT established a broader food services program, the cafeteria ceased to be affiliated with the College of Home Economics.
The cafeteria was closed for remodeling in spring 1972 and reopened for winter quarter 1973 as an “ultra modern” facility featuring scramble areas and with the addition of small private dining rooms that could be reserved by groups. The cafeteria remained in service when Sophronia Strong Hall was taken out of service as a residence hall in 2008. It was closed on January 28, 2011, when the Southern Kitchen cafeteria opened in Volunteer Hall.
Utility work at the site, begun in January 2014, signaled the beginning of the project to create a 268,000-square-foot science facility incorporating a small area of the 1925 building, the arches along Cumberland Avenue, the lintels marking the sections named for the first five coeds, and the Tudor revival-style facade on White Avenue. Rebuilding the gardener’s cottage on the original grounds of the Cowan property was also part of the project. The $114 million, nine-story facility, housing the Departments of Anthropology and Earth and Planetary Science, biology labs, and chemistry labs was slated to be completed in 2016. The State appropriated $75 million for the project, and the remainder was, under the state funding guidelines in effect, the responsibility of UT and would come from Student Facility Fees. The Lewis Group and S/L/A/M Collaborative were the architects.