Mid-winter may have seemed like a bad time of year to mount a six-week revival program in a makeshift wooden building.

It wasn't.

"Religious Tidal Wave Rolls Over Pittsburgh," a Gazette Times headline said on Jan. 12, 1914, the day after the crusade began.

By the time Billy Sunday and his associates wrapped up their 124 services, almost 1.6 million people had traveled to Oakland to participate.

That attendance number, reported in the Feb. 24, 1914, edition of The Gazette Times, was equal to three times the city's population in 1910 and about one and one-half times Allegheny County's.

Most services were held in a temporary wooden tabernacle, constructed at Forbes and Bellefield avenues, where Heinz Chapel now stands. Nearby Soldiers Memorial Hall, as it was originally called, was used to handle overflow crowds and smaller services.

About 75,000 people attended opening day programs, the newspaper estimated in its Jan. 12 edition. "Many were turned away from the tabernacle ... shortly after the doors were swung for the first service of the day," the paper said. "During the afternoon, when Mr. Sunday spoke to the men, it was figured that 20,000 found it impossible to gain entrance to the campaign house of worship."

Pittsburgh's response to Billy Sunday's revival meetings was not uncommon. Sunday was a former professional baseball player who had played for both the Pittsburgh Alleghenys and the Philadelphia Phillies in the 1880s and 1890s. Converted to evangelical Christianity, he crisscrossed the country for more than 20 years, drawing huge crowds to his revival meetings.

His first evening service gave the flamboyant Sunday "an opportunity to do many spectacular things," the newspaper reported.

These included "the shedding of his coat, which he waved wildly in the air with his right hand, then dropped it to the top of his pulpit and put it on again, as if the temperatures without had been torrid, or frigid ..."

"Looking straight down into the sawdust in front of his platform, as if talking with the devil himself, the Rev. William A. Sunday laughed ..." the newspaper reported. "He poked fun at an imaginary devil, 'hah-hahed' him to scorn, and led his audience to believe he was giving Old Nick an occasional poke in his ribs with his fist."

While Billy Sunday was ordained as a Presbyterian minister, his revivals were non-denominational Protestants events that drew listeners from many churches.

Not to be left out, the same day that Sunday began his Pittsburgh crusade, leaders of the region's large Roman Catholic population offered a one-day event to be part of the region's "Religious Tidal Wave."

"FOES OF PROFANITY FORM MIGHTY HOST," the newspaper reported elsewhere on its Jan. 12 front page.

"A demonstration such as is seldom witnessed in Pittsburgh took place yesterday when almost 10,000 men, members of the Diocesan Union Holy Name Society, gathered at the Exposition to take a solemn stand against the use of profanity and blasphemy," the Gazette Times said. "As many as could filled the seats and the outer aisles of the music hall and almost an equal number thronged machinery hall."

The Exposition was a complex of buildings at Pittsburgh's Point used for fairs, conventions, trade shows and, later, ice hockey.

Speakers at this event included the Rev. Charles H. McKenna, head of the Dominican Order and the "Father of the Holy Name Movement." "Father McKenna was clad in the robes of the Dominican order, and as he looked over the vast audience a smile crept over his countenance," a reporter observed. "When he seated himself, he trembled slightly from the cold and did not remove his overcoat until he was called upon to speak."

While thousands had to be turned away from Billy Sunday's opening events, organizers did find room for two late arrivals.

Police Lt. Hugh Duffy was approached by "a short, stocky, kindly faced man, accompanied by an elderly woman," according to a sidebar story on the revival.

" 'I'm Mr. Bryan, the secretary of state,' the man said, 'and this is Mrs. Bryan. We would like to slip in.' "

They were guided to the choir and seated four rows from the back. "Only a few persons recognized the secretary of state," the newspaper said.

William Jennings Bryan, three times the Democratic candidate for president, was known as "The Great Commoner," and during his brief visit to Pittsburgh he lived up to his nickname. "Mr. and Mrs. Bryan went to the tabernacle on a street car and back by the same route," according to the Gazette Times.