After World War II, the university’s enrollment burgeoned, and the institution desperately needed housing for students, space for instruction, and facilities for offices and meetings. Trailers from Oak Ridge were a significant help with the housing of married students. More versatile were the barracks, which had been used at Camp Crossville, a prisoner of war camp near Crossville. The Federal Public Housing Authority’s program of relocating barracks from Camp Crossville for use as dormitories created Sutherland Village on land formerly used as Knoxville Municipal Airport and rented from the City of Knoxville. The program also placed three groups of housing barracks on campus. (The barracks on Cumberland Avenue were razed for construction of the Law College in 1948.) All student housing was relocated from trailer and barracks housing on the Hill and agriculture campus by 1951 and from Sutherland Village by the move to Golf Range Apartments in 1965. Trailers were removed after being vacated, as were most of the barracks.
The extreme shortage of teaching space for chemistry and other departments resulted in placement of prefabricated structures on the Hill from the prisoner-of-war camp in Tullahoma (Camp Forrest) for use as classrooms, labs, and offices. These structures and their installations were financed by the Federal Works Agency under the GI training program. The structure behind Ayres was L shaped and contained 32 offices, which were occupied by business administration, education, and liberal arts faculty members. A three-unit chemistry building that contained 18 classrooms was located in the back of Science Hall and across from Ferris. The Chemistry Annex, also known as Splinter Hall, was used first by Chemistry until the 1954 addition to Dabney Hall was completed and then by music until the Music Building was completed in 1965 (opened for classes in January 1966). It was still in use by psychology and continuing education when it burned in 1972.
Seven structures from Camp Forrest were also constructed at the agriculture campus: a veterinary clinic, two laboratory buildings, a lunchroom cafeteria (Mabel’s), a blacksmith shop, and a bull barn on the Cherokee Farm. The Christian associations, which provided a partial student center function, were located in a barracks until they moved to the Carolyn P. Brown Memorial University Center. The student newspaper and yearbook were also located in this barracks.