Clark University
Massachusetts
1887
Clark University chose white and emerald green as its school colors when the university was founded in 1887 as a graduate school, with white being the dominant color of the pair. Clark College, an undergraduate school for women that opened in 1902, selected scarlet and white as its school colors. Clark College merged with Clark University in 1920. The white and emerald green were retained as the academic colors of the university, and the scarlet and white colors of Clark College were adopted as the new athletic colors for the university.
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): scarlet/white (1914-1916); crimson/white and emerald green/white (1917-1918); red/black (1923-1927); green/white (1930-1935)
Until his death in 1921, Gardner Cotrell Leonard was the Director of the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) and a partner in the firm of Cotrell & Leonard, an academic costume manufacturer and the depository for the records of the IBAC. If one assumes that a college or university was assigned a hood lining pattern by the IBAC when academic costume was ordered from Cotrell & Leonard, client lists for Cotrell & Leonard can help one estimate the approximate date a particular lining pattern was approved by the IBAC.
Clark University first appeared in a Cotrell & Leonard advertisement in Graduate Courses: A Handbook for Graduate Students 1897-1898, which was published in 1897 and suggests an Intercollegiate Bureau hood assignment for the university in 1896 or 1897. The advertisement did not describe the colors or heraldic pattern of Clark’s hood lining, but the university’s hood was cited in the 1908 Clark University Register as being white with an emerald green chevron, a description repeated in all IBAC lists from 1927 onward.
Clark College, on the other hand, first appeared in the same 1927 IBAC list as having a hood lined scarlet with a double width (seven-inch) white chevron.
Clark University has adopted a “custom” doctoral gown design that is tailored from green fabric with black velvet facings and sleeve bars. Embroidered patches of the university seal are sewn to the upper part of the gown’s facings. It is not currently known when the university approved this custom design.
Below are two photographs of this gown with a Doctor of Education hood from the University Cap & Gown Company (Balfour). The green color of the gown and hood lining chevron is not the traditional emerald shade of the university’s green.
