Over the course of its history, the school grew from a small industrial institute with one building to a university with five colleges and an enrollment of around 11,800 students.

[5] On May 14, 1894, one year after a fire destroyed the old Ruston College, the Lincoln Parish Police Jury held a special session to outline plans to establish an industrial institute for Lincoln Parish and to introduce the plans during the upcoming session of the Louisiana State Legislature.

The police jury decided at the meeting to move forward with the plans and called upon the local State Representative George M. Lomax to introduce the legislation during the next session.

During the legislative session, State Representatives Lomax and J. T. M. Hancock from Jackson Parish, and lawyer and future judge John B. Holstead fought for the passage of the proposed bill.

The act established The Industrial Institute and College of Louisiana to be located in Ruston, LA.

Students who were admitted into the general preparatory class were required to be fourteen years of age and to be able to read, write, speak and spell with "tolerable correctness."

[10] During Colonel Prescott's five years at the institute, the school's student enrollment grew and the first diplomas were awarded.

[16] W. C. Robinson, one of the original faculty members in 1894 and a professor of mathematics, succeeded Prescott as President of the Louisiana Industrial Institute in 1899.

[12] The Louisiana Industrial Institute suffered in its early years as a result of politics and inadequate financial support from the state government.

The students and faculty assembled at the chapel before the start of each school day for Bible reading, prayer, and singing.

The building would house the Mechanical Arts Department and the School of Engineering until the erection of Bogard Hall in 1940.

[19] As a result of the changes, bachelor's degrees were offered in the fields of engineering, business administration, education, and home economics.

Among the factors cited by the agency were a high student-teacher ratio, crowded classrooms, library facilities that failed to meet the minimum standards, and a low teaching cost.

Another reason for the building's name change was due to Governor Leche having been imprisoned along with a number of state officials in the infamous Louisiana Scandals of 1939.

Despite the completion of the Keeny Hall in 1937, Louisiana Polytechnic Institute still faced problems as it tried to fit the growing student body onto the undersized campus.

School officials also sought the assistance of the Federal Government through appropriations from the New Deal relief funds.

The only exceptions were Reese Hall which was built on the Tech Farm campus and Howard Auditorium which was a Streamlined Moderne building.

[26] In 1998, all these buildings were individually added, along with Keeny Hall and the former Prescott Memorial Library (now University Hall), to the National Register of Historic Places as part of "The 1930s Building Boom at Louisiana Tech" Multiple Resource Area.