Partially completed in 1966 and designed by Painter, Weeks, and McCarty, the $11 million Presidential Complex consisted of four residence halls named for former UT presidents, a central courtyard, and the Presidential Court Building housing principally dining facilities, the bakery, lounges, and other amenities. With the opening of these dining facilities, UT first offered students both room and board on campus.
Originally, the project included three dormitories and was called the Shelbourne Dormitory Complex, with the first two halls built called New Hall South and New Hall North. The board of trustees named the complexes after former UT presidents at their November 1966 meeting and gave the overarching designation of Presidential Complex to the development.
The buildings were constructed by the lift slab method, in which the steel poles were raised and the concrete was poured on the ground and then lifted to fit the poles. Melson Contractors Inc. of Shelbyville was the contractor for Carrick North and South and for Reese Hall. The residence halls were named for Samuel Carrick, W. B. Reese, and Thomas Humes. Buildings had been named for these presidents previously but had been destroyed by fire or razed to allow new construction.
In 2013 the university announced that its master plan for student residential facilities would replace the 1960s dormitories of the Presidential Complex, as well as Morrill Hall and the Apartment Residence Hall. The Fred D. Brown Hall and new halls on the former site of Bill Gibbs Hall and Shelbourne Towers Apartment Building would allow the 1960s halls to be razed and replaced by smaller, better-designed residence halls. The food service facility also was to be replaced with a new community and dining facility. The new residence halls were envisioned to be three- or four-story facilities, arranged in a village-like configuration. New halls, unlike the 1960s halls, would meet current building codes, have adequate electrical and Internet infrastructure, and meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards for sustainability.
The State Building Commission approved the $234 million project and UT’s recommendation of Messer Construction Company as the construction manager on August 21, 2014. It approved CH2MHill as the project’s designer in June 2014. The project was to be staged over five years, with completion initially anticipated in 2019.