Duggan Street School
; "Queen Alexandra School")
The red brick Duggan Street School (now Queen Alexandra Elementary School), is located on the corner of 77 Avenue and 106 Street in Edmonton. Queen Alexandra is the city’s oldest continuously operating school (1906) and it is known as the University of Alberta’s first home. At the time, it was located in the City of Strathcona. Strathcona and Edmonton merged in 1912.
Assembling every morning in the gymnasium, 45 gowned students, seven of them women, were led by the University’s first official faculty. These students received instruction in English, Classics, Modern Languages, Mathematics, and Civil Engineering. President Tory’s office was also located in the building. As described by Professor Broadus: “In September of 1908, I found [Henry Marshall] Tory ensconced in the attic of a small public school building. There assembled the four of us. We were to constitute the Faculty, veritable philosophes sous les toits, and him and we and it, were for the nonce the University of Alberta.”
In 1909, the students and faculty bid farewell to the building that had so generously housed them for the University’s first term, and relocated their studies to the roomier Strathcona Collegiate Institute (now known as Old Scona High School).