The UT Board of Trustees approved construction of a separate building for home economics in 1925. A center section and two wings were originally planned, but one wing had to be eliminated because the projected cost exceeded budget. Even without the second wing, the $165,000 facility had exceeded its budget by $15,000 by the time of its completion in 1926. Architects for the building were Barber and McMurry (Grant C. Miller having dissolved his partnership with Miller, Fullenwider and Dowling and having associated with Barber and McMurry). This facility was the first building in the South to be built at a state university for the exclusive use of home economics.
The ground floor held the nutrition laboratory, and the wide hallway was designed to be used as a rainy-day playground for the nursery school. The building’s dedication was held in Jefferson Hall on October 28, 1926. Classes were dismissed for the dedication. Open houses at the building and the practice house constructed as part of the project were held the same day. In 1937 the right wing of the building was added. The original structure was renovated in 1948, and a new wing was added in 1959. The 1937 structure sustained a serious fire in 1952, damaging rooms on the first and third floors, including the dining room decorated by J. A. Sloan of New York that had been visited at various times by all the governors of Tennessee in office since its completion in 1937.
The building is on the site of Sunnyside. It was named the Jessie Harris Home Economics Building for Dean Emeritus Jessie Wootten Harris on October 31, 1964, seven years after she had retired. It was the first academic building on campus to be named for a woman. Interestingly, the resolution presented to the UT Board of Trustees by Edward J. Boling, then vice president for development, and approved by the trustees, named the facility at 1205 West Cumberland Avenue instead of the Home Economics Building’s address of 1215 West Cumberland.
In 1985 when the name of the college was changed to Human Ecology, the name of the building was changed to the Jessie Harris Building.