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Founder of Duquesne University

Rev. Joseph Strub, C.S.Sp., founder of the Pittsburgh Catholic College. Strub, of the Holy Ghost Congregation in Germany, selected in Pittsburgh a few years after he and other Holy Ghost fathers were exiled from Germany.

In 1874, Bishop Domenec of the Pittsburgh Diocese urged Strub to establish a college. Despite his original reluctance, he opened The Pittsburgh Catholic College of the Holy Ghost on October 1, 1878, with 6 faculty and 40 students. Father Strub left Pittsburgh to establish the Holy Ghost fathers in Arkansas two weeks after his college opened.

Wylie Avenue Building

Pittsburgh Catholic College, began in rented quarters on the second floor of this building on Wylie Avenue.

This location is now where Crosstown Boulevard passes over Center Avenue, just north of Chatham Center. First floor occupants included a tailor and a baker. The aroma of baking bread filled the whole building, often making it difficult for the students to concentrate on their work. Classes were held in this building for eight years.

The Chapel

The new chapel, begun under the resourceful Father Murphy's direction in 1893, quickly became the spiritual center of Duquesne. Renovated many times after its completion in 1904, its interior, shown here in 1938, was an ornate form of Victorian Gothic. Its stained glass windows were made in Munich, Germany, and donated by friends of the college. Thanks to the efforts of Father Griffin, chapel goers enjoyed the music of an organ with 1,290 pipes. The chapel connected directly to the back of the main building, and its red brickwork matched that of the older structure, although it did not have the intermittent stone layers included in the earlier building. The corners were castle-like stone towers ornate with merlons and crenels, a curious touch for an ecclesiastic building. The wax image of St. Romulus, the boy martyr, was a visible part of the part of the altar until the 1950s. The relics themselves rested beneath the altar.