St. Ambrose University is a private, coeducational, liberal arts university affiliated with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Davenport. It is located in a residential area of Davenport, Iowa. St. Ambrose was founded as a seminary and school of commerce for young men in 1882. It owes its beginning to the first bishop of Davenport, The Most Reverend John McMullen, DD, who founded it under the auspices of the Diocese of Davenport. The affiliation remains strong today. For its first three years, classes were held in two rooms of the old St. Marguerite’s School, located on the grounds of what is now Sacred Heart Cathedral in Davenport. Bishop McMullen died in 1883, and Reverend "A.J." Aloysius Schulte, a mere 23 years old, was named St. Ambrose’s first president. The school was moved to the Locust Street campus in 1885, when the central part of the present Ambrose Hall was built. Located in a secluded grove of oak trees, the site was far removed from the city itself, intentionally far it seems, from the “corrupting effects of town life.” That same year, St/ Ambrose was incorporated as “a literary, scientific and religious institution.