These alterations, which cost about $34,000, helped Dickinson blend with the High Victorian Gothic style of the John C. Green School of Science and the library, but when this style fell out of favor less than two decades later, most students viewed Dickinson as an eyesore.

Indeed, when Dickinson Hall burned to the ground in the same 1920 fire that destroyed Marquand Chapel, the reaction was generally positive. According to a contemporary news report, "Apart from sentimental considerations, the loss of Dickinson Hall is not without its compensating features. Built in 1870, when American architecture was perhaps at its lowest ebb, the structure was out of harmony with the charming Colonial lines of Nassau Hall and with the university Gothic which characterizes all the recent structures."

Dickinson Hall's most important contribution to the evolution of the campus had more to do with the donor than the structure itself. John C. Green , the great-grandson of Jonathan Dickinson and brother of Henry W. Green, class of 1820, had given money to the College before, but Dickinson Hall was his first significant gift. He soon became McCosh's most reliable and generous patron, and eventually donated some $2 million to the College, funding the Chancellor Green Library, the John C. Green School of Science, and the Chemical Laboratory (now Aaron Burr Hall.)