Point Park’s campus is ablaze with various greens, yellows and the occasional red. While it may seem odd in a sea of dark blues and purple, the campus has always donned these colors throughout each building and onto the university seal.
Archive coordinator Phillip Harrity would normally be the one to ask about the mysterious history of Point Park’s official school colors.
“But it truly is a mystery,” Harrity said. There was really no meaning to the choice of colors.
As he looked through the records, he found very little information on why, how or who chose the colors. One notable thing was that, initially, Point Park’s official colors were white and green, but changed sometime in the late sixties. The change was initiated by the basketball team, likely due to the fact that white was a common jersey color. This led to the white changing to gold.
I initially came to Harrity for answers about the colors, but since there was no real reason or symbolism behind them, our conversation shifted into something even more interesting: the broader history of Point Park itself. Have you ever wondered what the deal is with Point Park being called both the Pioneers and the Bisons?
Dorothy Finkelhor, a high school dropout, created Point Park, then called the Business Training College, with the intention of giving people a second chance. She began teaching secretary school in 1934, with the first class having 8 students.
At the time, other schools only trained students in one medium of secretary work — such as law, medical or what have you. Finkelhor saw that many of these skills were transferable, creating an applicable certificate for any secretarial work. By 1936 she had over 200 students.
In this time she offered quick-start programs, intended for people who did not get the right grades in high school but could get them in the right direction for the next step. This meant that, for many students, they were doing all of the core requirements in their first semester. Finkelhor was also the only faculty the first year.
“She was the president of the school; she bought furniture, teachers, everybody,” Harrity said. In 1968 we became the governing board of the Pittsburgh Playhouse, which was its own arts school prior.
They added nursing between the late forties and early fifties, and by the sixties we became Point Park Junior College, a junior college meaning a post-secondary school that offers associate degrees.
We got our first mascot in 1966, the Pioneer. Since Robert Morris’ mascot, the “Minute Man,” looked very similar to the Pioneer, we changed to the Bisons.
We chose the bison because, like pioneers, it represents trailblazing and strength. Although we still refer to ourselves as Pioneers, as we are Pioneers of education, Finkelhor’s vision of transferable skills laid the groundwork for Point Park’s practical, career-focused identity that remains today.
In 1968 the school purchased a live bison named Black Diamond. On his gotcha day, they brought him to campus and had a parade, even closing down 3rd Avenue.
Black Diamond gets its name from a famous buffalo named Black Diamond that is believed to be the name of the original buffalo on the “Buffalo Nickel” coin. Our bison was bought from a farm in Massachusetts and lived in South Park, which has a reserve of bison you can still see to this day.
Together, the colors, mascots, and history of Point Park tell a story of resilience, ambition and trailblazing spirit — a spirit that continues to mold the campus and its students today.
