By 1959, most of the World War II era hutments were removed from Veterans Village and students were appreciating the additional 7,000 square feet of space provided by the new Physical Sciences Building, but things were still crowded.

Enrollment had increased to 11,500 and even the new building wasn't enough to handle nearly 2,000 freshman and sophomore chemistry students who crowded into Quonset labs that required daily plumbing repairs. As the O'Colly put it in an editorial at the time, the huts were: "cold as an icebox in the winter and vice-versa in the summer."

OSU President Oliver S. Willham would lead the passage of a statewide bond issue to change things in the early 1960s.