Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Massachusetts
1865
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): crimson/steel gray (1906-1914); gray/red (1915); gray/crimson (1916-1922); crimson/steel gray (1923-1933); crimson/gray (1934-1935)
The Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) assigned Worcester Polytechnic Institute a hood lining no later than 1915. It was light gray with a “Harvard crimson” chevron, according to a 1927 IBAC list of hood linings. By 1948 the Bureau had modified the color citation of the chevron to plain “crimson”; this hood lining description remained the same in all subsequent Intercollegiate Bureau lists.
“Steel gray” was typically a medium gray shade, but Worcester Polytechnic used the term to describe the silvery light gray of polished steel – a tone that can be seen in early 20th century cigarette cards, silks, pennants and other vintage souvenirs from the institute. To avoid confusion with the hood assigned to Stevens Institute of Technology (silver gray with a cardinal chevron), Worcester Polytechnic has been reassigned an arrangement of the hood colors that resembles the heraldic division of the institute’s seal: steel gray above crimson, divided per bar.
Worcester Polytechnic Institute students chose crimson and steel gray as their school colors in 1880. Eight years later the seal of the institute was designed, featuring a heart and an arm and hammer. The heart was taken from the seal of the city of Worcester (known as “the Heart of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts”), and the arm and hammer symbolized the industrial skills that would be developed at the institute. The institute’s colors were then said to refer to these two aspects of the seal: the crimson color for the heart and the steel gray color as a symbol of industry.
Illinois Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stevens Institute of Technology, and Worcester Polytechnic all adopted combinations of red and gray school colors.
