University of Washington
Washington
1861
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): purple/gold (1895-1935)
In a Cotrell & Leonard advertisement in the December 1895 edition of the Yale Literary Magazine, the University of Washington was said to be a client of that academic costume firm, which was also the depository of the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC). This advertisement probably referred to clients of the firm before the inauguration of the 1895 Intercollegiate Code of Academic Costume, which means that the University of Washington was probably one of the first schools to be assigned a hood lining.
Washington’s hood lining design was described in a 1918 Encyclopedia Americana article on academic costume written by Gardner Cotrell Leonard, the Director of the IBAC. In this article, Leonard stated that the university had been assigned a hood lining that was “purple above gold, parti-per-chevron”. The Bureau probably employed the per chevron division to avoid confusion with the hood linings already assigned to Northwestern University and Knox College, whose “royal purple” (dark purple) school colors the IBAC had possibly interpreted as “purple” (medium purple).
All subsequent IBAC descriptions of Washington’s hood lining were worded in a similar fashion.
In 1892, students at the University of Washington met to select colors for their school. Because their state was named after George Washington, some students campaigned for red, white, and blue. Others did not want to debase the national colors of the United States by using them for collegiate athletic competitions where they would be soiled. Then a student stood up and read the opening lines of “The Destruction of Sennacherib” by Lord Byron:
The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
With that, purple and gold were unanimously chosen to be the official colors of the University of Washington.
