The former orphanage and convent is a three-story brick building with a chapel on the first floor and a cupola with a cross on the roof. After the building was closed in 1944, SCAD restored it to house classrooms, computer labs, and a state-of-the-art conservation lab. The current name honors Clarence Thomas, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, who served as an altar boy in the adjacent church. He is also the most famous alumnus of St. Benedict the Moor School (1916; closed 1969) at 556 E. Gordon Street, which replaced the original 1907 school for black children that the Missionary Franciscan Sisters had opened in the basement of the church.