When Alice Watkins Shields, then the widow of William Simpson Shields, died on March 4, 1934, she left one-fourth of her estimated $600,000 estate to UT to establish an endowment to be known as the Shields-Watkins Endowment Fund, the income from which was to the used for the “Physical Education Department” and the upkeep of Shields-Watkins Field. She left the house at 1600 Melrose (razed for the Hodges Undergraduate Library) to UT, but not the furnishings. The university purchased the furnishings for approximately $1,400.