In 1898 the trustees turned over the upper two floors of the Mess Hall (aka Steward’s Hall) to the Women’s Department as a dormitory for women students, renaming the building Barbara Blount Hall in honor of one of the first five coeds of the institution. This structure was the institution’s first women’s dormitory.
In 1900, with $20,000 in Knoxville City bonds that had matured, the trustees spent $17,000 to build a new dormitory for women (with rent from the dormitory and from the Mellen/Turner House, designed to create an endowment fund) and named it Barbara Blount Hall. The building was located immediately to the west of Perkins Hall on Middle Drive and was ready for occupancy in fall 1901. The building held the laboratories of the Home Economics Department’s cooking courses and served as the first location of meeting rooms for national sororities, which had arrived on campus in 1900. The structure was damaged by fire in 1926, but the damage was repaired.
Following the building of Henson Hall as a women’s dormitory, Barbara Blount Hall housed 45 male students. From 1946 to 1956, the structure was designated for use to house female transfer students. In 1956 it was allocated to house student nurses of UT hospital, who continued to utilize it until they moved into the building constructed for their use at the hospital in summer 1959. Barbara Blount Hall was razed in 1979 and became a parking lot.
During the building of Barbara Blount Hall, eight skeletons of Union soldiers were discovered. The remains were transferred to the National Cemetery in Knoxville and reinterred in marked but unidentified graves. In 1919 an additional six skeletons were found just west of Barbara Blount Hall (below the driveway) during excavation for steam pipes to heat Ayres Hall.