Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago

Illinois

1891

Formerly “Chicago Lutheran Theological Seminary”

official hood lining pattern
olive green
old gold

Detailed historical information about the olive green and old gold school colors of Chicago Lutheran Theological Seminary is not available at present, but the olive green was a dark shade of this color.

To avoid assigning duplicate hood linings to colleges and universities that used the same school colors, the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) used different types of heraldic patterns to divide the two or more colors in an academic hood. In IBAC lists from 1927 and 1948, a number of hood lining patterns were described as “[color] above [color]” or “[color] over [color]”, which referred either to a hood lining divided per chevron, per reversed chevron, or per bar. Unfortunately, today it is not usually known which of these three patterns the Bureau intended to describe.

The Bureau assigned Chicago Lutheran Theological Seminary a per chevron pattern to avoid duplicating the hood lining assigned to the Philadelphia Dental College (old gold with an olive green chevron). Since the Philadelphia Dental College went defunct in 1913, it would seem that the IBAC assigned Chicago Lutheran Theological Seminary their hood before that date, but strangely the seminary did not appear in early Intercollegiate Bureau lists from 1927 or 1948.

Lists compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) and Academic Dress and Insignia of the World (1970) described the seminary’s hood lining as old gold above olive green, divided per chevron, and an IBAC list from 1972 said that the school used a hood lined “old gold over olive green” without specifying how the two colors are divided.

A photograph from a c.1905 Cotrell & Leonard catalogue that has been altered to illustrate a bachelor's hood lined with two colors divided per chevron.