Princeton University
New Jersey
1746
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): orange/black (1895-1935)
In 1894 Princeton invited other universities to join an “Intercollegiate Commission on Academic Costume” to draft a uniform system of academic costume for American colleges and universities. Representatives from Columbia, New York University, Princeton, and Yale served on this committee, which used Columbia’s system of academic costume as the basis for the new “Intercollegiate Code of Academic Costume” the Commission approved on 16 May 1895. The Board of Trustees of Princeton University formally adopted this Intercollegiate Code on 10 June 1895, stating that the lining of its hood would be orange and black, without further describing the heraldic division that would be used to separate the colors.
Orange has been the official color of Princeton since 1868, and was often unofficially used with black. Orange was chosen to honor William of Nassau, the Prince of Orange, whose family colors were orange and blue. In 1896, the university considered making orange and blue the official college colors, but because orange and black had been used for at least thirty years, Princeton’s Board of Trustees selected orange and black as the official school colors that same year. For a contemporary discussion of this subject, see Allan Marquand, “Nassau and the Orange and the Blue”, Princeton College Bulletin Volume 7 Number 4 (November 1895) 85-91.
The Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) assigned Princeton a hood with an orange lining and a black chevron. The chevron was probably a nod to Princeton’s coat of arms; during this early period of the Code the IBAC is known to have considered the aesthetic design of the hood lining to be roughly equivalent to an upside-down shield.
The 1899-1900 Catalogue of Princeton University was the first to include the text of the original academic costume regulation the university approved in 1895, but it wasn’t until the 1900-1901 Catalogue of Princeton University that a heraldic clarification was added, which stated that it was “the practice to have a black chevron upon an orange background” of the hood lining.
That said, there may have been some variation in early Princeton hoods: a reporter covering commencement ceremonies at the University of Chicago for the Indianapolis News (9 July 1896) described the hood lining of a professor from Princeton as having a single color of orange.