Charles Thompson Memorial Hall

The Progressive Era's preoccupation with group organizing and economic class shaped the history of the first Deaf social club in the U.S.

Written by Sarah Pawlicki with Gail Dubrow and Laura Leppink | Design by Morgan LaCasse

August 4, 2021

Black and white photograph from the 1950s of a crowd of Deaf folks socializing at round tables inside Charles Thompson Memorial Hall.

Introduction

Charles Thompson Memorial Hall , located at 1824 Marshall Avenue in St. Paul, Minnesota, was recognized as the first social club for the Deaf in the U.S. at the time of its construction in 1915.

Sepia-toned historic photograph of the Charles Thompson Memorial Hall. The building is large, brick, and square, and has a fancy porch attached to the front and a staircase leading up to the porch. — The interactive sliding image feature shows two images of Charles Thompson Memorial Hall. The picture revealed on the left side shows the hall in 1916 one week after its official dedication, and the picture revealed on the right side shows the hall in 2019.

Contemporary color photograph of Charles Thompson Memorial Hall. The building’s shape and size has remained unchanged from the historic photograph, but the porch’s original railings have been replaced by brick, and the porch is no longer screened. — The interactive sliding image feature shows two images of Charles Thompson Memorial Hall. The picture revealed on the left side shows the hall in 1916 one week after its official dedication, and the picture revealed on the right side shows the hall in 2019.

In 2011, due to the advocacy of Charles Thompson Memorial Hall trustees and board members, the site was officially accepted into the National Register of Historic Places in recognition of the hall’s “ significance for both its architecture and social history .”

This map shows the location of Charles Thompson Memorial Hall, roughly equidistant between Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. The map is interactive and can be zoomed in and out via the plus and minus buttons on the bottom right of the map.

This map shows the locations of St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Charles Thompson Memorial Hall. When the hall was first built, the Deaf community magazine The Silent Worker described the location of Charles Thompson Memorial Hall as: " about midway between St. Paul and Minneapolis, and the principal car line between the two cities turns at the corner and passes both in front and on the side of the building ."

The hall has been an integral hub for Deaf residents of the Twin Cities since its construction.

The story behind Thompson Hall’s construction is best understood from an intersectional perspective. Charles Thompson Memorial Hall represents the apex of opportunity that the privileges of inherited wealth and whiteness offered people with disabilities in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Black-and-white illustration of Charles Thompson Memorial Hall, showing a side view of the hall. The landscape includes pedestrians on the sidewalk near the hall, a neighboring house on the far right of the image, and a tree on the front left of the image. — A version of this illustration appeared in *The Companion: By and For the Deaf* on November 15, 1916, accompanying an article celebrating the hall’s opening.

The Thompsons

Black-and-white portrait of Charles Thompson. He is a white man with short brown hair, a rectangular face, and a small moustache. — Formal portrait of Charles Thompson.

Charles Thompson, the hall’s namesake, was a wealthy, white Deaf man. His father, Horace Thompson, was a co-founder of the First National Bank of St. Paul, alongside his brother, James Egbert (J.E.) Thompson. Horace was an active participant in the railroad construction industry.

The Thompson brothers were key players in the Twin Cities elite business community - so much so that, upon J.E.’s death, the Minneapolis Daily Tribune reported that “ Mr. Thompson’s death will cast a gloom over the entire business fraternity of Minnesota. ”

Charles himself was born in 1864, in the midst of the American Civil War and, more locally, in the aftershocks of the United States’ genocidal campaign against the Dakota Oyate .

It is unclear whether Thompson was born deaf or became Deaf as a child. Thompson entered Deaf social circles through attending the Minnesota School for the Deaf, then a racially integrated but predominantly white institution.

Thompson married a Deaf Scottish immigrant, Margaret Brooks, on September 29, 1896. The newlywed couple hired Olof Hanson to design their first St. Paul residence. Hanson was a Deaf architect and a former classmate of Thompson’s at the Minnesota School for the Deaf. Hanson would later also design Charles Thompson Memorial Hall.

Deaf historian Doug Bahl observed :

[Charles Thompson] was able to do what he pleased as he always had a source of steady income from his father’s wealth.

The Thompsons’ multiple residences, scattered across the United States, created a sort of social prototype for the later social hall. The couple regularly hosted parties, played cards, went on hunting and fishing trips, and at least Charles played so much croquet that he and his friends even played at night, lit by lanterns.

A transcript for this interview with Doug Bahl is available.

Bahl described Thompson’s social life by saying,

The people really looked up to Charles, almost as if he was the mayor of a Deaf colony.

Black-and-white historic photograph of the Thompsons’ Windom, Minnesota residence. The home features two stories, an attic (evidenced by two dormer windows), and two columned porches. A small group of eleven people are sitting in front of the home. The man with a mustache standing on the right end is Charles Thompson. — This photograph was taken in July, 1896. The pictured house is Charles Thompson's Riverside Stock Farm residence in Windom, Minnesota.

Black-and-white photograph of Margaret Thompson laying the cornerstone of the Charles Thompson Memorial Hall. She is wearing an all-black dress and a black brimmed hat. — Margaret Thompson, standing next to the future cornerstone of Charles Thompson Memorial Hall.

After Thompson’s death in 1915, Margaret was left with the legacy of the Thompson family’s tremendous wealth. She decided that a social club for the Deaf, named after her husband, was the most fitting way to honor his memory .

Of the $90,000 originally dedicated to the building, half was pledged to construction and half to ongoing maintenance. Margaret herself ensured that a specific social center would exist for the Twin Cities Deaf community long after both she and her husband passed away.

Margaret Thompson and Olof Hanson collaborated in the process of building the hall. Margaret's considerable financial support ensured that no person had to pay a cover charge to belong to the club.

News clipping from the June 14, 1916 edition of the Cook County News Herald (Grand Marais, Minnesota). The text reads: “Mutes’ Clubhouse Started. Only Building of Kind in United States Being Built. Minneapolis. -- The cornerstone for an $80,000 clubhouse for mutes, the only one of the kind in the United States, has been laid at Marshall and Fairview avenues, Midday. The building will be known as the Charles Thompson Memorial hall, and its construction has been made possible through the endowment of $40,000 by Charles Thompson, a mute who died in April, 1915, on a train near Laramie, Wyoming.” — On June 14, 1916, the *Cook County News Herald* (Grand Marais, Minnesota) announced the cornerstone laying for Charles Thompson Memorial Hall.

Deafness and Design

The hall’s architect, Olof Hanson, also has a story that points to intersections of privilege and oppression. Throughout his professional architectural career, Hanson was, in many ways, a Deaf advocate. He argued against oralism , the twentieth-century educational philosophy that Deaf people were best educated through lipreading and non-signed speech. Hanson instead supported Deaf speakers of ASL , suggesting his belief in the important role a place like Charles Thompson Memorial Hall could play within the Deaf community, as a space where ASL was not only permissible, but welcomed.

Excerpt from Deaf Mosaic , a Gallaudet University-produced series documenting Deaf history. This clip features an actor as Olof Hanson. A transcript of this section of the series is available.

Olof Hanson was born in Sweden in 1862 , and immigrated to the United States with his family around 1875.

Color photograph showing a white house with green accents, a porch running the length of the house, and tall rectangular windows. — Olof Hanson designed this house for Jonathan Noyes in 1896. Noyes served as the superintendent of the Minnesota School for the Deaf from 1866 to 1896.

He became deaf as a teenager, and, like Thompson, attended the Minnesota School for the Deaf. Upon leaving that school, he attended the institution that became Gallaudet University, receiving his Master’s degree in Architecture in 1889. He trained with the Minneapolis firms of I.H. Hodgson & Sons and E. Townsend Mix, and subsequently studied abroad at the École des Beaux-Arts . Circa 1894, Hanson established an architectural practice in Faribault, Minnesota.

A black and white newspaper clipping, reading ““THE DEAF DO NOT BEG” National Association Warns People Against Fake Mendicants. HOW THEY CAN BE UNMASKED. Impostor Bureau Defends the 85,000 Deaf Americans, And Tells Of Their Organization.” — Clipping from the *Baltimore Sun*, reflecting the sentiments of the National Association of the Deaf, headed by Olof Hanson from 1910-1913.

Hanson served as the head of the National Association for the Deaf (NAD) from 1910-1913. In this position, he embraced twentieth-century “Progressivist” capitalism, as Deaf historian Octavian Robinson explores . As NAD president, Hanson endorsed policies designed to dissociate deafness from “vagrancy,” stating "The Deaf Do Not Beg." In his policymaking, Hanson regularly emphasized that “real” Deaf individuals were self-sufficient, productive community members.

Charles Thompson Memorial Hall stands as an example of the ways in which a physical environment may be designed to center practical use, creating a space that fosters community inside and outside its walls. When designing Charles Thompson Memorial Hall, Hanson stated that :

While due attention has been given to artistic effect, the main consideration has been to make the building convenient, substantial and durable.

Black-and-white photograph of the interior of the Charles Thompson Memorial Hall, showing the large windows separating different rooms that would facilitate communication via sign language. — Large windows created clear sight lines between rooms inside the hall.

Hanson worked within the confines of prevalent contemporary building techniques and aesthetics while fostering a space that was uniquely designed for the Deaf community. One example of this balance can be seen in his effort to do all he could in the confines of a Beaux Arts masonry structure to emphasize clear lighting on all levels of the building. Hanson featured interior windows (shown in the floor plan below and circled in red) that made it possible for club members to communicate via ASL from room to room.

Floor plans for Charles Thompson Memorial Hall. The interior windows, shown in the accompanying photograph, are circled in red. — Floor plans for Charles Thompson Memorial Hall, with the interior windows circled in red.

Thompson Hall’s stage represents a venue where Hanson designed for practicality, artistry, and community use. A description of the Assembly Hall and lecture platform from the publication The Silent Worker is particularly evocative:

Special attention has been given to lighting the Assembly Hall and lecture platform. In the daytime large windows on both sides give ample light, without any windows in front or rear to annoy either speaker or audience. For night use, beside the ceiling lights, electric lights are placed in the platform floor on both sides (but not in the middle) and covered with glass, so that a soft light will be thrown upward on the speaker just where needed, without glaring in the eyes of either speaker or audience. The stage will also be illuminated by swinging lights placed on both sides in reflectors. This is the modern way of stage lighting, and preferable to the old way of overhead border lights, especially for the deaf to whom sight is everything. Arrangement will also be made so the lights in the Assembly Hall can be controlled by the speaker, and used for calling the meeting to order.

In this photograph, eleven people, in costumes ranging from Lady Liberty to Charlie Chaplin, stand onstage at Charles Thompson Memorial Hall. The upward-facing stage lights are circled in red. — Photograph of a stage production inside Charles Thompson Memorial Hall. The stage lights are circled in red.

Lighting was a central consideration - even in the basement, which was " only three feet below the general ground level, which permits of large windows, so that the basement will be well lighted ." The basement interior features a generous amount of light through the raised basement windows. This design choice offers a unique opportunity to see how accessible design with one community in mind may inadvertently become at odds with ideals of universal access.

Hanson’s design works as intended, increasing accessibility via light for easier visual communication. Yet, due to the raised basement, every entry point for the hall is accessible by stairs. In recent years, as the club has sought to increase physical access at the site, they have worked creatively with designers to find solutions to meet community needs and maintain the integrity of Hanson's design.

A contemporary color photograph of the Charles Thompson Memorial Hall’s basement, showing a tan and red checkered floor, a serving bar on the left, and, in the center of the room, an aged leather window seat in front of a three-paned bow window and a row of round tables. — Photograph of the Charles Thompson Memorial Hall basement lobby, taken from the front stair.

Historic Preservation

Thompson Hall’s need for greater accessibility and preservation led to the foundation of the Save Thompson Hall nonprofit. The initiative is currently raising money to install an elevator and to facilitate restoration of key elements of the historic building. ( Donations are tax deductible.)

REPAIR encourages Minnesota-based preservationists to support the Hall's efforts to ensure that the building remains accessible and its history remains vibrant.

REPAIR also acknowledges that, as historic preservationists, we often tend to gravitate towards the most architecturally interesting sites for stewardship. Mirroring social construction, actual physical construction of sites now recognized as “historic” often reflect privilege. For folks with fewer socially-granted privileges, their community spaces were frequently rented, transient, or less architecturally ornate than those of wealthy white folks. Those places also deserve our attention, investment, and care.