Ground was broken on April 3, 1976, for the College of Veterinary Medicine Building, with Governor Ray Blanton as the principal speaker. The building was occupied in September 1978. The board of trustees approved its name at its June 1980 meeting, and it was dedicated as the Clyde M. York Veterinary Medicine Building in October 1980.
A team of three Knoxville architectural firms designed the building: Lindsay and Maples; Barber and McMurry; and McCarty, Bullock, and Hosaple. The contractor for the project was Johnson and Galyon. The 250,000-square-foot building was built at a cost of $16.6 million. The UT Veterinary Hospital is a primary referral hospital for veterinarians in Tennessee and surrounding states. The building was renamed the W. W. Armistead Veterinary Teaching Hospital in 2004, and that name was modified to W. W. Armistead Veterinary Medical Center in 2010. The building is the second UT facility devoted to veterinary medicine. The first was a 1950 veterinary research laboratory built to study the “X” disease in cattle.