Charles L. Thompson

Charles Louis Thompson (1868-1959) was an Arkansas architect and principal of Thompson and Harding Architects and Thompson, Sanders, and Ginocchio. In 1886 he moved to Little Rock to work for architect Benjamin Bartlett as a draftsman. In 1888 he became a partner, and the company was known as Bartlett and Thompson. Bartlett sold his share of the company to Thompson in 1890 and moved to Mississippi. He gained a partner Fred Rickon the next year, and the two worked together until 1897. In 1916 he partnered with Thomas Harding Jr. and the company became known as Thompson and Harding Architects until 1925. In 1927 he merged with architects Theodore Sanders and Frank J. Ginocchio and the firm became known as Thompson, Sanders, and Ginocchio.

Thompson and company designed more than two thousand buildings, including fifteen county courthouses, Little Rock City Hall, St. Edward Church (1901), the J. C. Marshall House (1908), the M. B. Moore Store (1915), the A. C. Butterworth House (1915), the Mrs. A. E. Van Etten House (1900), El Dorado High School, the second Hotze House, the Wilson Edwin Hemingway House, the Temple B'nai Israel, the J. D. Back House, the E. H. Conner House, the W. S. McClintock House, the A. M. Keith House, W. E. Collier House, W. E. Hemingway Barn, J. Merrick Moore House, and the Union Trust Company Building.

Thompson was born in Danville, Illinois, in November 1868. He married Lillian McGann on July 24, 1889. Thompson retired in 1938.

References

• Tilly Carter, "Legacies in Brick and Mortar: The Life and Works of Charles Thompson," Clark County Historical Journal (2002): 33-49.
• Goodspeed's History of Pulaski County, Arkansas (1889).
• F. Hampton Roy, Charles L. Thompson and Associates: Arkansas Architects, 1885-1938 (Little Rock, AR: August House, Inc., 1982).