First occupied in the spring quarter 1962 and originally known as the Yale Avenue Dormitory, Gibbs Hall was built to house 248 male athletes. Prior to construction of Gibbs, athletes had lived in East and South Stadium Halls. The total cost of the facility was $1,175,000. Construction was financed by a $670,000 loan from the federal Housing and Home Finance Agency, UT appropriations made by the 1959 state legislature, and funds from the Athletics Association. The federal loan was to be paid over 40 years from rentals of the facility.
The architectural firm for the facility was Baumann and Baumann, and the contractor was V. L. Nicholson Company, who completed the project two months early. Training table facilities were included in the building, which was UT’s first completely air-conditioned residence hall.
The building was named for assistant basketball coach Bill Gibbs in February 1964, following his death in an airplane crash. It was renovated in 1986–88 as an athletics dormitory at a cost of $6 million. In January 1991 NCAA delegates to the national convention passed a proposal requiring member schools to eliminate athletics dormitories. The proposal to eliminate athletics dormitories was made by the presidents of NCAA schools, and UT cast its vote in favor of abolishing athletics dorms. The NCAA, which defined athletics dormitory as “any dormitory or a portion of a dormitory in which at least 50 percent of the residents are student-athletes,” gave its member schools until August 1, 1996, to open such dormitories to other students. UT Athletics Director Doug Dickey opened Gibbs to nonathletes in the fall of 1992.
The hall was closed prior to fall semester 2013, and its site became part of a plan for redevelopment of the Stokely Athletics and Bill Gibbs Hall sites to provide a 1,000-space parking garage; a new residence hall, open to both male and female students; a dining facility open to the entire university community; and an expansion of football practice facilities to provide a third outdoor field. It was razed in 2014, and construction of a replacement seven- hundred-bed residence hall was immediately begun. Cope Associates Inc. Architecture was the architect for the replacement residence hall, and Blaine Construction was the contractor.