The need for a dormitory to house Dickinson School of Law students was recognized as early as 1898, twenty years before the Law School moved from its original home in Emory Hall, located at the corner of South West and West Pomfret Streets, into its current home in Trickett Hall on South College Street in Carlisle.
On 14 September 1906 William Trickett, dean of the Dickinson School of Law, wrote a letter offering a faculty position to a young lawyer then living in Charlottesville, Virginia. Trickett proposed that the young man—Walter Harrison Hitchler—teach courses in criminal law and equity. "I think you will like the work," wrote Trickett. "It will be useful to you, and may be the initiation into a career as professor of law, that may be lifelong and honorable."