Canisius College
New York
1870
Students at Canisius College adopted royal blue and old gold as their school colors in 1914. “Royal blue” described a shade of purplish-dark blue and “old gold” described a brownish-orange shade of gold.
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): old gold/blue (1917-1918); blue/gold (1923-1935)
The Canisius College Annual Catalogue 1914-1915 included a section on academic costume that stated the college’s hood was lined with royal blue and old gold silk. How these colors were divided was not described.
The college first appeared in an Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) list from 1927, having been assigned a hood lined Yale blue with an old gold chevron. This hood lining description did not change in subsequent IBAC lists. “Yale blue” was how the IBAC often described a dark blue shade like royal blue or navy blue.
Unfortunately, this was an exact duplication of the hood lining the IBAC had already assigned to the University of Delaware (Yale blue with an old gold chevron) and a close duplication of the hood lining the IBAC had already assigned to Allegheny College (navy blue with an old gold chevron). To resolve this problem, here Canisius has been reassigned a hood lined with its correct colors: royal blue and old gold.