National Review
Andrew Yang’s unfounded call to retire the New York City flag
On February 1, Andrew Yang – the New York author, entrepreneur, nonprofit and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate who is now running for mayor of New York City – tweeted that the official flag of his adopted city, a flag iconic across the skyline. New York has flown since 1915, should be awkwardly retired and replaced with a less “old” design. “The colors are based on the flag of the Dutch prince. The seal is old, ”Yang claimed, referring to the NYC official seal carried by the flag. Corey Johnson [speaker of the NYC Council] suggested having a new flag designed by artists in New York as a symbol of civic pride, “Yang stated – and Yang apparently agrees:” I like the idea of a more modern flag for NYC. “In Mr. Yang’s philosophy, longevity is clearly not a sign of success. Forget the flag design for a moment. Why worry about the age of the flag? New York City itself was first inhabited in 1624 and has been around for centuries. older than the flag that Yang thinks is too geriatric to represent. Should New York City, or the state of New York itself, therefore be abolished? Of course not. Antiquity in terms of antiquity is no argument against the NYC flag. need a better argument to convince New York to abolish the iconic flag designed by the mayor’s commission from 1915. So enough with mere age as an argument. What about the flag itself? City in the trash can of history? Before June 1915, New York City had no official flag and an unofficial white flag was used with the city seal on an ad hoc basis. “To date,” as reported in Seal and Flag of the C City of New York (published in 1915), “New York City has never had an official flag in the truest sense of the word.” Mayor John Purroy Mitchel appointed a civilian-led committee to produce an official flag and introduce a historically informed, standardized version of the city seal. The occasion marked the 250th anniversary of the installation of the first mayor and council of New York City Council in 1665, marking the beginning of ‘New York City’ under the English and the end of Dutch rule over New Amsterdam – apart from a period in 1673–74 when the Netherlands regained power. Produced by the Mayoral Committee and approved by the City Councilors in 1915, the blue-white-orange tricolor was a landslide design victory, flying proudly and distinctly across the New York skyline for the past 105 years. The city flag and seal it bears combine the colors of the flag of the Dutch Republic with a “quintessentially American” eagle cap on the city’s English arms, creating a bold emblem that unmistakably represents New York and its past. The flag was intended to demonstrate the identity and creation of a fiercely proud American city. It has been consciously created to evoke the heritage and history of New York and New Amsterdam. The apparent “antiquity” of the emblem is intentional, not accidental. But it seems all this history has been lost in today’s anti-flag crowd. Flag of New York City The design coup of the New York City flag is that it succeeds as a bold and energetic-looking symbol in a way that is basically nurtured, not obscured, by its roots in the past. It also has the official poll necessary for a city like New York. While modern flag designers often criticize the practice of placing stamps on flags, it would be the NYC flag if a design were an exception to this rule. The design works, and has been for 105 years. Why punish this flag for its success? The same can be said for the design of the seal itself. When the 1915 art committee submitted their version of the city seal to the board of directors for approval, they answered an expected criticism of the design. The committee’s response anticipated Yang’s complaints more than a century later: “It is by no means a new design,” said John B. Pine of the official Art Commission, “and any criticism that it is not pretty or that. failure to comply with heraldic requirements is irrelevant. “He added: no doubt a more beautiful seal could be designed, but we consider it much more important to perpetuate the seal adopted by the Common Council in 1686 and since that time. date has been used by the city, but with slight modification as the symbol of its legal entity. (These words can be found in the aforementioned book, Seal and Flag of the City of New York, as John B. Pine himself edited the beautifully bound book, which was officially authorized by the Mayor’s Seal and Flag Committee. . is a great read for anyone interested in the history of Gotham’s public symbols. You can find it both in the NYC Public Library and online. It provides an in-depth background to the city’s emblems and the brand new official flag. blue and orange tinctures of the city flag Apparently the publisher did not share Yang’s doubts about the colors of the “Dutch Prince”.) Anyone concerned that the seal on the city flag is “old” has missed the boat with their concern with a good hundred years. The seal was of venerable age in 1915, when the art committee and aldermen enthusiastically applied it to the new Gotham tricolor. Far from lacking in civic pride, the flag was intended from the outset as a grand, bourgeois project that would promote pride in a major American city. Citizen artists already designed the current flag, so retiring would accomplish nothing more than obscure their work. It would create the same error that a “new flag” should fix. This suggests that those who oppose the flag do not understand its history and consider it fair game to create excitement and novelty for a social pet project. Finally, New York City is far from the only city or province with the old Dutch, New Amsterdam colors. I am a lifelong resident of Dutchess County, New York, which also draws on this aesthetic. But at least the NYC flag features the Dutch colors in upright bars. With its orange-white-blue triband, the Dutchess County flag is an exact reproduction of the Dutch Prinsenvlag, which can only be distinguished by the county seal. Ulster County is in the same situation as Albany, the capital of the state of New York. Yang’s homeland of Westchester, fittingly enough, also conspicuously bears the Dutch colors on its flag. Throughout the history of the country, Americans have stubbornly exhibited their heritage through civic symbols. Before passing another flat judgment on a classic American emblem like the NYC flag, Mr. Yang and his anti-flag allies must recognize that fact. After all, the American flag itself bears the title “Old Glory” – and not as an insult.