Union Presbyterian Seminary
Virginia
1812
Formerly “Union Theological Seminary”
Detailed historical information about the Alice blue and white school colors of Virginia’s Union Theological Seminary is not available at this time, but “Alice blue” was an extremely pale azure blue or ice blue color (almost white, with a hint of green) made popular by Alice Roosevelt, the daughter of Theodore Roosevelt. This suggests the seminary adopted these colors in the 1910s.
Union Theological Seminary must have sent the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) a blue color sample that was darker than the seminary’s official “Alice blue” because academic hood lining pattern lists the Bureau published in 1927, 1948, and 1972 described the seminary as having a hood lined Presbyterian blue with a white chevron. “Presbyterian blue” was one of the ways the Bureau described a “true blue” or medium blue color. A 1969 IBAC list seemed to indicate the shade was lighter and brighter: here the Bureau stated that the lining was “azure blue” with a white chevron. None of these descriptions accurately captured the pale blue shade of Union’s blue, but lists compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) and Academic Dress and Insignia of the World (1970) precisely described the seminary’s hood lining as Alice blue with a white chevron.
Unfortunately, all of these hood lining descriptions were easily confused with the hood lining patterns the IBAC assigned in the late 1890s and early 1900s to Columbia University (light blue with a white chevron) and Millikin University (Presbyterian blue with a white chevron), as well as the later hood lining of Yeshiva University (azure blue with a white chevron). To avoid this problem and to more closely depict the Alice blue and white colors of Union Presbyterian Seminary, the school has been reassigned a light blue hood lining with three white chevrons.