It’s pronounced “du-KAIN”, which you might know from Pittsburgh’s Duquesne University. In fact the Duquesne name has long been prevalent in Pittsburgh: it dates back to Fort Duquesne, named in 1754 for Michel-Ange Duquesne de Menneville (c. 1700-1778), the Marquis Duquesne. (In 1758, the English sacked the fort and replaced it with Fort Pitt – hence “Pittsburgh”.) Duquesne was a governor of New France, the colony that stretched from Newfoundland to Louisiana, but he never set foot in the Pittsburgh area. Neither did the man who reportedly named this street: Italian immigrant Camillo Cereghino (1878-1969). As head of the Washington Boulevard Improvement Company, Cereghino led an investment group that purchased 150 acres here in 1912 – a year before Harry H. Culver inaugurated Culver City – and subdivided it as Washington Park. Either he or his sales agents then named its streets after figures in American history, from Jackson to Van Buren and from Lafayette to La Salle. (Cereghino himself resided on Madison and Farragut until the end of his long life.) The Marquis Duquesne’s rival, British general Edward Braddock, is also honored here with Braddock Drive.
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