Theological Seminary of the Reformed Episcopal Church
Pennsylvania
1887
Academic hood lists published by the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) in 1927, 1948, and 1972 described the Reformed Episcopal Church Seminary as having a hood lined with a single color of purple. Depending upon the shade of purple the seminary used, this would have been a duplication of one of the single-color hood linings of various shades of violet the Bureau had already assigned to Kenyon College, City University of New York, New York University, and Williams College.
The Bureau apparently revised the hood lining assignment of the Reformed Episcopal Serminary in the late 1940s or 1950s using the school’s new colors, because a list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) described the seminary’s hood lining as navy blue with a reversed (inverted) cadet gray chevron. The IBAC must have inverted the chevron in the seminary’s hood to avoid duplicating the hood lining pattern already assigned to Lincoln Memorial University (navy blue with a gray chevron).
It is not known why the IBAC did not update its 1972 list with the seminary’s new hood design.
The history of the school colors of the Theological Seminary of the Reformed Episcopal Church is not well documented. The original color of the school was purple, but in the 1940s or 1950s the seminary appears to have adopted navy blue and cadet gray.
