Civil Rights: Original Site Of The American School For The Deaf - Hartford, CT

Original Site 

of the 

American School For The Deaf 

Hartford, CT

N 41° 45.842 W 072° 40.445

Short Description: 

The premier institution for the education of the deaf has its origins on Main Street in Hartford.

Long Description: 

A plaque on the corner of Main and Gold Streets in downtown Hartford marks the location of the first school in America for deaf children. It is the origin of the American School For The Deaf, the oldest permanent school for the deaf in the United States, founded on April 15, 1817 by Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc.

The bronze plaque is inscribed:

    {Image of the school}

   On Tuesday, April 15, 1817, in a building located on this site,
the Connecticut Asylum for the Education of Deaf and Dumb Persons
officially opened. The school was the first in America to teach deaf 
children and has a class of seven students. The name was changed
to the American Asylum at Hartford in 1819. Today, it is the well
known, American School for the Deaf.

   "Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened and the ears
of the deaf shall be unstopped." IS 35:5

   "HERE, is witnessed, for the first time in the western world, 
the affecting sight of a little group of fellow sufferers assembling
for instruction, whom neither sex, nor age, nor distance, could
prevent from hastening to embrace the first opportunity of
aspiring to the privileges that we enjoy as rational, social and
immortal beings."      - Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet

        To Those Who Remembered The Forgotten