University of Notre Dame
Indiana
1842
When Notre Dame was founded, the college selected colors of blue and yellow to symbolize truth and light, but after the statue of Mary and the dome of the Main Building were gilded in 1882, the yellow school color was changed to gold. Light blue, the original shade of the university’s blue, is traditionally associated with the Virgin Mary. Editions of the World Almanac from the early 1900s stated that Notre Dame’s colors were gold and blue, sometimes describing the latter as “peacock blue”, a light blue-green shade. By the 1930s the shade of blue had darkened, varying between navy blue and royal blue.
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): blue/gold (1895); gold/peacock blue (1896); old gold/blue (1897); gold/blue (1900-1931); gold/peacock blue (1934-1935)
Notre Dame University was an early client of academic costume manufacturer Cotrell & Leonard, as it appeared in a list of college colors appended to the copy of the 1895 Intercollegiate Code of Academic Costume the Intercollegiate Commission sent to the 1896 Living Church Quarterly (published in December 1895) but not in the 1894 World Almanac, which was the source of most of the college colors the Commission compiled for that appendix. Cotrell & Leonard’s information in the Living Church Quarterly described Notre Dame’s hood lining as blue and old gold, but the heraldic division of those colors was not included in that list.
The university was still a client of Cotrell & Leonard in 1902, according to Concerning Caps, Gowns and Hoods: Bulletin 17 (1902), but no description of Notre Dame’s hood was given in that catalogue. As Cotrell & Leonard was also the depository of the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC), the IBAC had no doubt assigned a hood lining pattern to the university at some point between 1895 and 1902 at the latest. The first definitive and complete Intercollegiate Bureau description of Notre Dame’s hood lining was in a 1927 list where it was stated to be gold with a light blue chevron.
This design remained unchanged until the 1960s, by which point Notre Dame’s blue had evolved from a light to a dark shade of blue. But at this late date the Bureau couldn’t change Notre Dame’s hood to gold with a dark blue chevron because similar hood linings had already been assigned to the College of St. Elizabeth (gold with a Presbyterian blue chevron), the University of California (gold with a Yale blue chevron), and Johnson C. Smith University (gold with a navy blue chevron). So the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume redesigned Notre Dame’s hood lining to gold over royal blue, divided per chevron. Here the original IBAC hood design has been used.