Then Graduate Manager of Athletics Charles T. Woollen decided to build a temporary structure with those funds and a more permanent venue later.

Following the basketball team's departure, students continued to use the facility for sports, while adjustments were made to allow for volleyball and golf.

The growth of the University of North Carolina in the preceding years strove the efforts to build a new facility so that more of the student body would be able to view games.

[N 2][6][7] It was reported that if one desired to go to a game at the then home venue Bynum Gymnasium the season before, one would have to get there an hour early to guarantee a spot.

[1] On October 26, The Tar Heel reported that construction began on the new indoor facility by raising steel erectors.

[7] The floor was maplewood and the rest of the structure was made of steel, with the roof and siding being galvanized sheet iron.

[13] As a whole, it was thought to be visually unappealing,[12][14][15] and one Daily Tar Heel article written after its removal, stated that most people considered the structure to be an "eyesore.

To stay warm the electricians put those big-wattage bulbs under the benches, and we had blankets and wore heavy sweat clothes.

[1] It was located between what is now Morehead-Patterson Bell Tower and Woollen Gymnasium along South Road, on the site of what is now Fetzer Hall.

[1] Due to continued heating issues, small electric heaters that featured blowers were used, but this proved ineffective.

[3] The Tar Heel wrote following the game: "Two thousand spectators, well-wrapped in overcoats, shivered away in the spacious and airy and saw the 'Tin Can' christened with a victory.

[8][12] The team was retroactively named the national champion by the Helms Athletic Foundation and the Premo-Porretta Power Poll.

[22][23] As success continued into Southern Conference play in the 1930s, the capacity of the Tin Can proved insufficient to meet the increased interest in the team.

North Carolina played the last of their games there at the end of the 1938 season, having officially moved to the adjacent Woollen Gymnasium on January 4, 1939.

[1][11][13] Collegiate boxing drew crowds close to 2,500 for fights that featured North Carolina born boxers Marion Diehl and Gates Kimball.

[1][8] Physical education classes made use of the venue in the years after the team's departure specifically for volleyball and track skills.

[8] A Charlotte businessman Charlie Wood sponsored a campus band between 1937 and 1940 that used the facility and during that time several artists like Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Frank Sinatra, and Eddie Duchin, among others, played in the Tin Can.

[6] In 1940, there were rumors that the Tin Can would be renovated on the interior and a form of insulation would be added, allowing it to remain a permanent part of campus.

[11] While concurrently operational with Woollen, The Daily Tar Heel in 1940 stated that roughly 500 students and athletes would make use of the facility.

[31] Immediately after World War II, the arena housed returning veterans when the university ran out of space in dormitories.

[29] It was stipulated that 25 sheets of the siding be saved in the deconstruction for the alumni department, who would sell them to former students as sentimental pieces.

[29] The $5.9 million building to be placed on top of where the Tin Can laid was hoped to completed by November 1979 and featured 157,000 square feet that would be used for handball, squash, and three large gymnasiums, among other uses.