Due to a lack of boarding accommodations for students during the early years of the Normal School and the decision in 1904 by the Missouri legislature not to fund Cape’s dormitory-building projects, Louis Houck, L. J. Albert, and M. E. Leming formed the Normal Dormitory Association. Its purpose was to fund and oversee the building of two dormitories on the south side of Normal Avenue. Leming, Albert, and Houck loaned the Normal School $40,000 and $50,000, respectively, enabling the school to construct the Leming and Albert Hall dormitories.

By September 1904, work had started on Albert Hall, a men’s dormitory. On March 7 of the following year workers completed the building. Albert Hall served temporarily as the home of women who were boarding at the school until the completion of Leming Hall. Leming Hall, a women’s dormitory, was completed shortly after Albert Hall.

During this time the Normal Dormitory Company leased the dorms to the school for $500 per year. In 1911, the Missouri legislature finally appropriated funding in the amount of $85,000, but budget shortfalls prevented the purchase until May 1912 when the legislature made a partial payment of $30,000. In January 1913, the legislature made final payment on the dormitory bonds and acquisition of the dormitories finally occurred. They officially became part of the State Normal School.

Prior to World War I and during the conflict, the college utilized Albert Hall as a barracks for students in the Student Army Training Program. During the 1923-1924 school year the college remodeled and refurnished the interior of Albert Hall and turned it back into a dormitory for women, accommodating eighty students. In 1943, the Navy secured use of the dorm to house the students enrolled in the V-12 program.

The college razed Albert Hall in the early months of 1960 to accommodate a new dormitory, Dearmont Quadrangle; Leming Hall was razed in the late 1970s in order to make way for the construction of the new University Center.