With building activity at a standstill throughout the Depression and World War II, it was axiomatic that at the war's end Princeton would need to address some immediate needs in its physical plant. Since the mid-1930s, President Dodds and others in his administration, notably librarian Julian Boyd, had been dreaming about constructing a new library to replace the overcrowded facilities in Pyne Library. But a lack of funds, and then the war, frustrated these plans. The priorities for the University's post-war construction program were radically altered by a disastrous fire on May 13, 1944 which destroyed the Gymnasium built by Cope and Stewardson in 1903 adjacent to Little Hall.

After the 1944 fire, the new library had to take a back seat to replacing the gym. Armed with a $1.1 million gift from Herbert Dillon, Class of 1907, the University hired architect Aymar Embury Jr., Class of 1900, to build a new gymnasium on the site of the old one, and in the same style.

Embury's Dillon Gymnasium differed in several respects from its predecessor.