To spot Thompson’s Block, look for a tall, pale cream brick building with three floors of big arched windows and brick details high above-you can’t miss those bold window frames and the old-fashioned storefront at 119 East Main.
So, you’re standing right where folks have done their shopping, their socializing, and yes, a bit of secret winking over beverages, for more than 150 years! Imagine it’s 1868: the air smells of fresh bread and sawdust, horse-drawn wagons rumble down a muddy Main Street, and Ole Thompson, a Norwegian entrepreneur with a twinkle in his eye, dreams big. He’s swapped his old wooden grocery shop for this solid brick beauty you see before you, back when cast-iron storefronts were the “smartphones” of retail-cutting edge, letting sunlight spill onto tins of coffee and barrels of pickles. Even those fancy brick pilasters and arched windows, topped with dignified limestone keystones, were the height of style.
Don’t forget, there was a grocery store packed with “drugs, medicines, wines, liquors, paints, oils, and chemicals”-the proper 19th-century version of a one-stop shop. But this was no quiet little grocer; it bustled, not just with goods but with gossip and laughter. After Ole’s passing, the store changed hands, becoming famous for its fish counter and serving as a neighborhood meeting spot for decades. The Nelson family even ran it all the way till 1929.
Now, as times changed, so did Thompson’s Block. In the 1930s, it was a lively tavern on the street level, offices above, and-brace yourself-eventually home to the legendary Dangle Lounge, Madison’s own burlesque bar, where the laughter and applause might have been just a little more risqué than Ole Thompson ever dreamed.
Today, the Rigby pub welcomes locals and wanderers alike. Scientists often mention “survivors” in nature, but here stands a survivor in brick and mortar-one of Madison’s last examples of mid-1800s commercial style, with stories still echoing behind those sandstone sills and under the bracketed cornice.
