King's Crown (symbol)

Columbia's current Crown logo

The King's Crown is a common symbol associated with Columbia. As a symbol, the crown has undergone numerous transformations and adaptations over the years. While Columbia's original "Crown" dates back to its pre-revolutionary days as Kings College, the crown's adoption as a school symbol didn't occur until the turn of twentieth century, and even then was adopted in an informal student-driven manner rather than a formal one.

Recently, the university appears to have more formally adopted the crown as part of its primary visual identity, giving it precedence over the seal and shield in branding.

Technically speaking, usage of the crown is regulated by the Secretary of the University. Despite a historical lack of enforcement, the University has recently been making greater efforts to regulate the school's visual identity generally.

The Crown of King's College

Columbia's symbolic association with a crown dates back to the days of King's College, when a copper crown was affixed atop the cupola of College Hall, a visible symbol of the College's royal charter. Today, that same crown hangs over the fireplace in the Trustees Room of Low Library, above the portrait of Samuel Johnson and the cornerstone of College Hall.

On a visit to New York in 1820, Stratford Canning, a British diplomat and future ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, was shown the crown by Professor John McVickar. Canning reportedly commented "You should preserve that crown carefully, sir, for you republicans will by-and-by need a crown."

As a side note, the King's College Crown does not appear to correspond exactly with any of the present Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom. The closest match would be St. Edward's Crown, which would make sense since, as it was crafted in 1661 and would have been worn by George II at the time of the founding of King's College. However, the Columbia crown is notably missing the fleur de lis present in all British royal insignia since the Norman conquest.

It's interesting to note that despite serving as the inspiration for Columbia's various crown logo designs, many of them, including the earliest, depart in a variety of ways from the original artifact.

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  The Crown of King's College, in the Trustees Room of Low Library

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  A sketch of the crown gracing the copyright page of the 1904 sesquicentennial history of the school, "Columbia University: A History", titled erroneously as the "Iron Crown of King's College."

Adoption as a symbol

The crown logo of the Kings Crown society

Unlike the lion, or the shield, the crown was not adopted with official fanfare and rollout, but rather grew organically to become part of the University's iconography. This may explain in part the myriad designs, proliferation of variants, and lack of a cohesive set of crown symbols for a long period of time.

Nevertheless, there are three events that, perhaps, had the most to do with the crown's staying power. The first was student driven, and the second, alumni, and the third, administrative.

In November 1898, a group of students and professors founded a new student literary society, "Kings Crown." From the beginning, the groups organizers had grander plans for the organization, envisioning a general social club for college students. Indeed, the group engaged in planning social and school spirit events, even the Varsity Show for a period of time, and eventually became the governing body of all non-athletic activities on campus. Their stated goal was to promote the 'collegiate spirit' on campus, and they deliberately steeped themselves in tradition and history, reaching back to old King's College for its name and prominently featured a crown in their logo, designed by School of Architecture student Huger Elliott (Class of 1899). This crown might arguably said to be the forefather of all our crown designs today.

This design introduced a number of major design departures from the original King's College Crown - elongated crosses attached to the circlet, the lack of a ball (the monde) between the crown and cross on top, and the removal of alternating diamond-shaped decorations around the circlet. In the original design the crosses attached to the circlet are very short, leaving much of the space beneath the half-arches "empty." In this design, and subsequent designs based on it, the crosses are stretched to 'fill out' the space.

The crown atop the Class of 1881 Flagpole in front of Low Library

In May 1906, the Class of 1881 made a 25th anniversary gift that would ensure that the crown became a visible fixture on campus, donating the flagpole east of Low Library's entrance to fly the Kings Crown logo. The pole itself is topped by a crown, much in the way that the old College Hall was topped with the original King's Crown. This crown adds two additional design differences from the original King's Crown - the half-arches are not of even width, but are curved, and the crosses inside the crown are latin crosses, rather than crosses pattée. The undulating half-arches have remained in all of the current designs. It's unclear which exact design was featured on the original flag, but it's likely some version of Huger Elliott's design for Kings Crown.

Finally, in 1913, Kings Crown was converted into an umbrella organization to officially oversee all non-athletic student organizations. It seems that at this period Kings Crown effectively became the predecessor to today's Activities Board at Columbia (ABC). As a result, the Kings Crown logo became a fixture in student life, affixed to the cover of handbooks and guidelines etc.

Despite its long run, the original Kings Crown logo has effectively vanished from use, though many of its design elements are visible in current designs.

One additional interesting note is that even as early as 1912 it was unclear to observers where exactly the crown came from as a symbol. It is noted in An Official Guide to Columbia Univeristy (1912) that the original King's Crown from King's College had served as the inspiration for its adoption as a symbol but no further details are provided.

Crowns around campus

The crown stamped on the back of Alma Mater, the oldest appearance of the Crown on campus

Crown on the frieze in Hamilton Hall

Crown on the molding in Butler Lounge

A survey of the campus to see when and where the crown appears (and in what forms) is interesting. The earliest buildings on campus (Low Library, Schermerhorn, Havemeyer, Fayerweather, and Mathetmatics (then the school of mines) Halls) feature no crown iconography in their design.

The first architectural incorporation of the crown came with Alma Mater (dedicated in 1903) - a crown that closely resembles the original King's College crown tops her scepter, and a two-dimensional image of the crown is incorporated into a relief of the University Shield on the back of her chair.

Hamilton Hall, constructed between 1905-1907, features crowns in stone right above the carvings of the school seals above each door (similar to the ones many of the McKim Meade and White buildings around South Field also have above their doors), and as part of the decorative frieze in the lobby. Subsequent to the construction of the building, a few graduating classes planted ivy outside the hall, and marked the spot with a carved crown in the foundation. All three crown designs feature elongated crosses. A somewhat different looking crown appears on the door of the Dean's office and is based on the carving directly above it, which was donated as a 25th anniversary gift by the class of 1894. That crown design appears throughout Hamilton Hall on plaques recognizing donors for the most recent renovation of the building, constituting the sole use of the design on campus.

The crown also makes brief appearances on two other buildings - high up on the facade of Avery Hall (built in 1912), and above the door of Wien Hall (built in 1925 as Johnson Hall).

Perhaps the most extensive use of the original King's College crown design occurs inside Butler Library (built 1931-1934). Upon entering, a visitor stands between two beautiful gates leading into the library on the left and right. Each gate is topped by a crown similar to the original King's Crown hanging in Low Library. Within Butler, the same crown design appears in the molding running along the ceiling of Butler Lounge, and the Reading Room (Butler 209).

A more recent architectural employment of the crown is atop the 116th Street gates on Broadway and Amsterdam Ave (both installed in 1970).

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  The crown atop Alma Mater's Sceptre

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  A crown carved into the foundation of Hamilton Hall

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  A design based on the KC crown used on the rarely seen Hamilton Hall gates

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  Crown above the CC Dean's office door

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  Crown on the CC Dean's office door

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  Crown affixed above the decorative gates in the lobby of Butler Library

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  The crown atop the 116th Street Gates

Current Designs

In its most recent attempt at creating a cohesive brand, the office of public affairs has identified four "official" crowns for general use. These include the Columbia College Crown, and three 'modern' crowns: the recently determined 'official' university crown, a variant that replaces the crosses with diamonds, and a variant designed specifically for SEAS.

Columbia College Crown

The Columbia College Crown

What is known today as the "Columbia College Crown" began life in 1910 as a logo of the Columbia Alumni News, a weekly alumni newsletter detailing on-campus events, administration activity, and alumni news.

The Alumni News began publication in Fall 1909. For its January 5th, 1910 issue, the newsletter featured elaborate hand drawn border art on its cover by Arthur Ware (Class of 1898), which included a sketch of a crown. The newsletter would keep this design through the middle of summer.

For the first issue of its second volume (7 July 1910) the newsletter cleaned up the cover art, but incorporated a crown design into each of the four corners of the border. This crown design is what we know today as the Columbia College Crown.

It's unclear at what point this design was adopted by the College for its general use. Nor is it clear at what point the subscript "1754" was added to the design. Lastly, it's unclear at what point, if any, this design was assigned for the exclusive use of the College, or whether that occurred organically.

While the design of the Columbia College Crown has been around for nearly a century, it was not given an official digitization treatment until 2007 when a member of CCIT on his own initiative undertook an effort to produce a definitive sample of the design to replace the various low-quality graphics that were in use.

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  A drawing of a crown on the cover of a Spring 1910 issue of Columbia Alumni News

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  The Columbia College Crown as it appeared on the cover of the Columbia Alumni News in Fall 1910

Modern Crown

The first version of the modern crown

At some point during the 20th century, someone developed a new crown design that was relatively faithful to the original King's College Crown design - the crosses were short, and the monde and diamond shaped ornamentation (though not alternating) on the circlet returned. However, the crosses pattée had been supplanted by latin crosses, and the outter half-arches did not curve down as sharply in the original. It's unknown at this time when and in what circumstances this crown was created. Usage of this version of the crown is incredibly rare today. It can be seen in some old uses of the University Shield, such as on the transom window above the Broadway entrance of Miller Theatre, and on labels used by Facilities to tag equipment and furniture with bar codes.

A second version of this design eventually developed without the outer ornamentation of the half-arches. Its most common use today is in the version of the University Shield that Columbia registered as a trademark (as opposed to other versions of the shield, including the original 1949 design, which are not registered with the PTO.) Another notable use of this design is on the University flag on stage in the Low Library Rotunda, which gets trotted out onto the stage during University Commencement.

Current University Crown

Around 1996 at the latest, a cleaned up version of the modern crown, without any ornamentation began showing up in graphical form on Columbia's Website. This design would eventually be formally adopted as the official Columbia crown in 2006.

Variant on the Current Crown

At some point (possibly in the early 2000s), the Columbia University Medical Center, then known as Health Sciences, developed a new crown design, possibly as part of its re-branding as the Medical Center. The design mirrored the cleaned up unornamented version of the modern crown that had begun appearing in the mid 1990s with one major change: in a radical departure from over a century of precedent, the Medical Center adopted a crown design without crosses. Instead the crown featured 'secularized' diamonds. The new diamond design was incorporated into the selection of crowns used, somewhat indiscriminately by this point, by the University. In fact it was incorporated into the University's new logo as appearing on the new website that debuted in 2004, replacing the university seal which had figured prominently in the old design, and also in other not-so-subtle ways (the rain mat in the entrance of Low Library for example). A number of individual schools adopted the new design including the School of Social Work and the Law School, which junked the Columbia Shield and its own 'sunburst' logo to do so.

However, the radical departure from history drew notice. After taking feedback into account, the older crossed design that had sprouted up in the 90s was given an official imprimatur.

At the time of adoption as the official design, each division of the university was given discretion to select either the 'official' crown design with crosses, or the 'alternate' crown design with spades, and as a result it's a toss-up as to which design you'll encounter. Journalism, Social Work, SIPA, Law, the Medical Center, Public Safety, and Student Services (and all its constituents - the Registrar, Faculty House, Catering, Dining, Undergraduate Housing, Health Services, etc.) have all adopted the alternate crown design. The central administration, Facilities, and the Libraries (though not all of them) have adopted the official design. SEAS adopted its own unique logo based on the official design in 2008.

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  Second version of the modern crown

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  Official version of the current University Crown

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  Alternate 'diamond' version of the current University Crown

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  Current SEAS Crown

Other designs

Columbia University Press Crown

Post-war Crown Design

In 1946 Columbia University Press updated its logo with a clean modern crown logo. Over time this logo would be adopted, probably unofficially, by various divisions of the University.

This design is not particularly visible around campus anymore in its original form except at Teachers College, which has retained it to this day as its version of the crown logo. It can be seen on the cover pages of Horace Coon's "Columbia: Colossus on the Hudson (1947), the book "Columbia Remembered" (1967), and on the south face of the water tower housing atop the apartment building and offices Columbia built on the corner of Riverside Drive and St. Clair Place (560 Riverside Drive- it's best visible from Riverside Drive going north). However it occasionally shows up unexpectedly in odd places, e.g. the stone marker southwest of the rotunda on Van Am Quad recognizing the Class of 1952's 35th anniversary gift, and the Class of 2002's Class Day program.[1]

Until the spring of 2008 the post-war design's most conspicuous and lasting legacy was its incorporation into the SEAS crown logo. Since 2008 SEAS has adopted a variant of the current University Crown.

The crown that adorns the lapel of graduation robes appears to be a close derivative, though not an exact copy, of this particular design, as it's also smooth and unornamented.

It also appears to have been adopted in some form by facilties for a period of time..

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  SEAS crown

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  Teachers College logo

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  Crown on the lapel of Graduation robes

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  Crown atop 560 Riverside Drive

Commencement Crown

For lack of a better term, the "Commencement Crown" was a design that primarily appeared on the banners that Columbia hung on the exterior of buildings around South Field and on Low Library during Commencement Week. As of 2007, those banners have all been replaced, and the news banners feature the current university crown. The origins of the 'commencement crown' is currently unknown, nor are any other uses of the design.

More crowns

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  A crown on a banner at SIPA

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  A crown printed on the cover of the yearbook for at least 1959-1963

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  The Columbia University Club of New York seal

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  The 'relief' crown, featured on the original University Shield design

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  Crown on a banner in Low Library during the the Queen of England's visit to Columbia as depicted on a painting on the 3rd floor in Butler Library

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  The Columbia Society of Automotive Engineers crown