Hamilton College
New York
1812
The original college color of Hamilton College was corn (an orange-yellow color), which was changed to rose (a dark pinkish-red) in 1875. In 1894 the college officially changed its colors to buff and blue. Judging from vintage tobacco cards, silks, pennants, and other collegiate memorabilia, Hamilton used a medium shade of blue, which was often described as “Continental blue” after the color of the uniforms worn by United States soldiers during the American Revolution.
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): rose pink (1895); Continental blue/buff (1896-1897); blue/buff (1900-1918); buff/blue (1923-1935)
The Cotrell & Leonard academic costume firm was the depository for the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC), and the names of both are mentioned in the same advertisements from the late 1890s and early 1900s. Gardner Cotrell Leonard, one of the partners of Cotrell & Leonard, was also the Director of the IBAC, so it seems likely that when a school ordered academic caps, gowns, and hoods from Cotrell & Leonard, the hood lining colors and heraldic pattern used for the order would be registered with the IBAC. Hood registration dates for schools, therefore, can be estimated as roughly contemporaneous with the first appearance of that school in a Cotrell & Leonard/Intercollegiate Bureau advertisement.
An advertisement of this sort featuring Hamilton College first appeared in the December 1895 issue of the Yale Literary Magazine, and another appeared in the June 1898 edition of the Hamilton Literary Magazine. A reporter covering commencement ceremonies at the University of Chicago for the Indianapolis News (9 July 1896) mentioned Hamilton as one of a number of colleges and universities that used academic costume, indicating an IBAC hood registration in 1895 or 1896. None of these references described the university’s hood lining.
The first definitive IBAC list with this information was published in the 27 July 1902 edition of The Argus, an Albany, NY newspaper, where Hamilton’s hood lining was described as blue with a buff chevron. But in a 1910 Intercollegiate Bureau list, Hamilton’s hood was duplicated by the new hood assigned to George Washington University (also blue with a buff chevron). The IBAC quickly moved to correct this mistake, so George Washington’s hood was redefined as “dark blue” and buff in a 1918 list while Hamilton’s remained blue and buff.
Confusingly, by 1927 the IBAC began describing Hamilton’s blue hood lining as “Yale blue”, which was how the Intercollegiate Bureau indicated a dark shade of blue, once again creating a duplication (in appearance but not on paper) with the hood assigned to George Washington University. A 1969 IBAC list corrected this problem, describing Hamilton’s hood lining as “Continental blue”, a return to the medium shade of blue originally used by the college in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.