At the end of WWII, veterans flooded college campuses like NISTC. In 1946, enrollment jumped to 901 men and 541 women, more than half of whom had served in the war. With no dedicated campus living space for men, veterans and faculty joined forces to find space for male students to live in DeKalb. Beyond that, the college established a number of makeshift quarters, including cots and bunk beds in the Still Hall gymnasium, the top floor of the Science Building, and in surplus barracks borrowed from an Army base in Wisconsin.

President Adams made the construction of additional dormitories a top priority in his post-War plans, but legislative support was slow in coming. A new women’s dorm (later named Adams Hall) was opened in 1949, but it took three more years to receive funding and construct the first such facility for men.

In 1951, Gilbert Hall was opened as an all-male dormitory with capacity for 374 men. Named for DeKalb’s first superintendent of schools, Newell D. Gilbert, the new dorm had the advantage of overlooking Glidden Field, the school’s original football field on the land now occupied by the Music and Art buildings.   Gilbert remained a popular living space for several decades, particularly preferred by students with classes on the east side of campus. While it was decommissioned as a residence hall in the 1990s and used as administrative “swing space” during the remodeling of Altgeld Hall, Gilbert was eventually renovated and reopened as a co-ed dorm in 2013.

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