The first building named Morrill Hall in honor of Senator Justin Morrill was the Agricultural Hall built in 1880 at a cost of $3,278.10. It replaced the White House, named for Moses White, in which the Preparatory Department had had a long tenure. The new building contained the classrooms and laboratories of the agriculture program, and an agricultural museum (with models of farm implements and machinery, specimens of farm products, and samples of Tennessee soils and fertilizers). The building was a two-story brick structure.
The building was enlarged in 1888 (at a cost of $6,800), and President Dabney moved the president’s office from South College to Morrill Hall in 1889. The structure was renamed Carrick Hall in 1908, when the new Agricultural Building was built on the Hill. The building, then Carrick Hall, burned in 1942, at which time it was being used by the College of Engineering. The building, as well as the garden, vineyard, and orchard were on the south of Science Hall, on the Hill.