This modernization program on the academic side was matched by a concurrent wave of dormitory construction designed to solve the perennial problem of students living in town. Even after the war, as much as a quarter of the student body lived off-campus, to the detriment (in the view of the Trustees and the administration) of the collegiate experience. The erection of new dorms enabled every student to find a room on campus.

Constituting the third wave of Collegiate Gothic dormitories on the campus, most of these structures were part of a related group of buildings stretching south of Blair Arch: Lockhart, ...