Illinois College

Illinois

1829

illinois college seal
illinois college
official hood lining pattern
A c.1909-1911 tobacco card by Murad Cigarettes.

The chapter on American academic hoods in the 1923 edition of The Degrees and Hoods of the World’s Colleges and Universities by Frank Haycraft included a description of the 1895 Intercollegiate Code of Academic Costume and a long list of schools, each with a description of its hood lining. The chapter was written in a way that implied that this list was from the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC). Actually, most of Haycraft’s American hood information was out of date (from c.1912) or inaccurate, derived from a chart of college colors in the 1909 and 1910 editions of the World Almanac, with the first color in this chart interpreted by Haycraft to indicate the lining color of the school’s hood and the second color in the chart interpreted to indicate the chevron color of the school’s hood.

That said, some of the schools in Haycraft’s book did not appear in the 1909 and 1910 editions of the World Almanac or are listed differently in those sources. So apparently Haycraft was given a partial list of college and university hoods from the IBAC, which he supplemented with additional schools from the 1909 or 1910 World Almanac. Illinois College is an example of an institution that did not appear in the 1909 and 1910 editions of the World Almanac. This suggests that the college’s hood lining description cited by Haycraft might be from information he received from the Intercollegiate Bureau around 1912. Haycraft described Illinois College’s hood lining as dark blue with a white chevron.

Yale blue
white

Illinois College was founded by graduates of Yale University, so Yale blue and white were chosen as the colors of the college by 1891 at the latest. Yale blue is a dark shade of blue.

Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): white/blue (1895-1900); Yale blue/white (1902-1935)

An illustration from a c.1965 Cotrell & Leonard catalogue that has been altered to depict a master's hood lined with three chevrons.
An illustration from a c.1965 Cotrell & Leonard catalogue that has been altered to depict a master's hood lined with three chevrons.

The first definitive IBAC description of the college’s hood is from 1927; here it was described as Yale blue with three white chevrons. The Bureau must have reassigned three chevrons to Illinois College because two other schools were by that point also using dark blue hood linings with white chevrons: Pennsylvania State University (navy blue with a white chevron), University of Connecticut (Yale blue with two white chevrons), and Villanova University (Yale blue with two white chevrons).