On February 28, 1901, the Board of Trustees of Washington & Jefferson College purchased the James H. Hopkins property on the corner of Beau and College Streets for $14,017 to be the site of a new dormitory for out-of-town boys who came to the Washington & Jefferson Academy, a prep school. The original Washington Academy was chartered as Washington College in 1806. Thereafter Washington College, and later Washington & Jefferson College, conducted a department preparatory to college classes. The preparatory department, under the name of Washington & Jefferson Academy, was under the general control of the Trustees and Faculty of the College and was conducted as a constituent part of the College. –-Pandora 1903, p.76.

The existing building on the property was torn down and the erection of a new fire-proof dormitory was begun at once. It was opened for use on January 8, 1902, with two of the three dormitory floors entirely occupied, and entirely completed on June 23, 1903. The total cost of the building and furniture was $95,977.59.

The new building was named after Rev. George P. Hays, D.D. who served as President of Washington & Jefferson College from 1870 to 1881. The dormitory was heated with steam and lighted throughout with electricity and was furnished with every comfort and convenience. It accommodated 60 students, six teachers and the principal's family. Each floor had two bathrooms, and three shower baths were located on the fifth floor. The students' apartments were arranged in suites of three rooms, two boys being assigned to a suite. In this way each boy was afforded the privacy of his own bedroom while a large study room was occupied by both boys in common.

In 1912 the Trustees decided to discontinue the Academy after 125 years of continuous existence. As reported in the Red & Black dated April 4, 1912, "[t]he attendance in the Academy has dwindled so far as to make it seem advisable to the trustees that action should be taken to discontinue that department. Improvement of conditions in the local high school and in other public secondary schools in this vicinity is believed to be the cause of the falling off in attendance at the boarding school." With the closing of the Academy in June 1912, Hays Hall became a dormitory for the College, accommodating 80 men. The first floor contained a reception hall and stairway, office, a dining room seating 150, kitchen and a number of single rooms. Table board and rooms were furnished to students as near to cost as possible, and order was maintained by a senate chosen by the roomers from their own number. The College Catalogue of 1912-1913 listed the rates for a bedroom and half of a study room at $5 to $8 a month, payable a term in advance. Table board was at the rate of $4 a week, which was paid in advance, at least, weekly. –-College Catalogue, 1912-1913.

Dormitory living was an entirely new policy in student life at Washington & Jefferson College and President Moffat announced that the new college dormitory was but a beginning of the dormitory system he envisioned. He stated that "[w]here the plan has been tried in other colleges it has been found to be a great success and its champions are many. A number of the alumni of the college have been quite anxious to have the dormitory plan adopted." --Red & Black, May 2, 1912. Men already enrolled in the College were given the first chance on the rooms and in its first year as a College dormitory, it housed mostly upperclassmen and only a comparatively small number of freshmen. By 1915 Hays Hall was designated a freshman dormitory and a faculty ruling compelled the new men away from home for the first time to take rooms in the dorm.

As described in the Red & Black of March 25, 1915, "Hays Hall is a $100,000 brick absolutely fireproof building. The only fire in the building is in the kitchen range which burns gas for the cooking. The Dorm is only a minute's walk from the college buildings and really is the center of life of the college. To miss a year of dormitory life is to miss a big thing in your college course. ... All rooms are furnished and bedclothing is supplied free of charge. The rooms are taken care of and the bedding is also laundried by the college. ... Miss Sadie Hewitt is the matron of the building and has charge of the rooms. ... [She] takes fine care of all the new men and the college men look on her as a mother."

During the summer of 1924 extensive improvements were made to many of the college buildings. "All of the rooms in the dormitory were redecorated and many of the rooms [were] furnished with new carpets and furniture, completing the refurnishing program which was commenced several years ago. The dormitory is now modernly equipped in every respect and provides very attractive quarters for the first-year men." --Red & Black, October 2, 1924.

On November 26, 1925, the Red & Black carried an article on the front page about the occupants of Hays Hall protesting the removal of a piano from the dorm lobby. The college had the piano removed for use by the Christian Life Service League. It was pointed out by the students that "while the league may be a worthy cause, and may need a piano, they may use the one in chapel, while the freshmen have none." Miss Hewitt, the house mother, declared that "lack of a piano encourages gambling and other violations of the rules since the piano is, especially to non frat men, frequently an only source of pleasure." According to the January 14, 1926, issue of the paper, the student protests resulted in the league members voting to return the piano to Hays Hall.

The doubling of enrollment following World War II necessitated the reallocation of space on campus. When the dining hall was moved into the Chapel in Old Main, the too-small Hays Hall dining room was converted into the college bookstore. This was located on the first floor of the Beau Street wing of the building and included a soda fountain. During the summer of 1948 all the exterior woodwork of Hays Hall was repainted and considerable repainting was done on the interior. Other improvements included tile floors for the shower rooms on the third and fourth floors and asphalt tile flooring on the first, third and fifth floors. –-Red & Black, September 17, 1948.

In 1952, with the return to pre-war enrollment, the dining hall was returned to Hays Hall and the college bookstore reopened in the south basement of the Administration Building. –-Physics News Letters, September 1952 by Raymond M. Bell.

At 9:00 a.m. Thursday, February 1, 1968, the doors of Hays Hall were officially closed—indefinitely. The building had been in constant use by the College as a dormitory since 1912. An estimated 4,000 freshmen students had made it their first college residence during that period. But the erosion of time had taken its toll. The old building had slowly deteriorated through the years. The plaster walls, the plumbing and heating units showed visible signs of wear. The building was not unsafe but the cost of maintenance had grown to prohibitive stages. Repairs were necessary throughout the building, particularly on the fourth and fifth floors. Student opinion was mixed in regard to leaving Hays Hall. Some criticized the shower facilities and the inconvenience of going to another floor to bathe while others said that the noise which seemed to constantly echo through the building made it difficult to study. None, however, was completely averse to living in the building.

Students moved from Hays Hall to the fifth and sixth floors of the George Washington Hotel during semester break. College furniture was moved into the hotel in a matter of two days. The College entered an agreement with the hotel to rent these two floors for a three-year period. Under the agreement the floors were to be used as a dormitory. Each floor contained 25 rooms, seven of which were singles, providing more than enough space to house the 86 students of Hays Hall, a house mother and four floor proctors.

The dining room and the infirmary continued to be housed in Hays Hall on a temporary basis. The dining room was scheduled to close in March 1968 when the Commons Building was completed. Future plans for the building remained speculative. Possibilities included reopening the first three floors to dormitory students or a conversion of these floors into faculty offices and converting a portion of the first floor into a new, more spacious bookstore. –-W&J Alumni Magazine, Winter 1968. The only plan eventually carried out was the conversion of the old dining room area into the campus bookstore which moved from the basement of McMillan Hall, then called the Administration Building, sometime in 1968.

In 1970 possible development plans for the College involved closing Lincoln Street. This was dependent on widening College Street to four lanes, which would entail razing Hays Hall. –-Red & Black, September 8, 1970.

By 1982, the infirmary and the bookstore were still located in Hays Hall but the old building was a matter of concern. It was considered to be a fire hazard because, among other reasons, it had not been well maintained by the College. According to Mr. Joseph B. Leckie, vice-president in charge of development, it "'didn't meet modern codes' and that, in case of a fire, the central staircase could act as a 'flue,' turning the entire building into a furnace." --Red & Black, November 4, 1982. In the Annual Report of 1982-83, after an authorized review of the physical plant by the Spillman-Farmer architectural firm of Allentown, Pennsylvania, it was recommended that Hays Hall be closed down "so that it may be refurbished when the need arises."

During the 1980's and early 1990's much talk circulated about renovating Hays Hall to make more living room for incoming students or of having the building made an historical landmark. However, the cost of such renovations and compliance to building codes made such plans prohibitive and during the summer and fall of 1994 Hays Hall was demolished. The ornate ironwork which graced the stairway in the lobby was saved and stored and is now showcased in the decorative railings of the Burnett Center.