Flag of Pennsylvania

How to read it

An act of the General Assembly of June 13, 1907 made the official flag blue, the same colour as the blue in the US flag, with the Commonwealth’s coat of arms in the centre and the edges trimmed with knotted yellow silk fringe, as the Senate of Pennsylvania summarises it. The arms go back to Caleb Lownes of Philadelphia, who drew a design almost identical to today’s in 1778: a shield, a bald eagle as the crest, two harnessed black horses as supporters, the motto at the bottom, and an olive branch and a cornstalk crossed below the shield. On the shield are a black ship with white sails on a blue sea, a deep red plough and three golden sheaves of wheat. The arms were drawn many ways between 1778 and 1873, mostly in the position and colour of the horses, so in 1874 the Legislature appointed a commission, which after a year’s study adopted Lownes’s design almost unchanged. The General Assembly had authorized a flag with the coat of arms embroidered on a blue field as early as 1799, and some Civil War regiments carried the arms on blue with a ring of stars around them. WYTV reads the eagle as Pennsylvania’s loyalty to the United States, and the corn and olive branch as the state’s past and future. The motto is also Pennsylvania’s state motto.

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How the flag is flown

The Senate of Pennsylvania’s guide says that on the same pole as the American flag, the American flag goes at the top; on neighbouring staffs, the Pennsylvania flag is raised after the American flag and lowered first. The governor decides when the state flag is lowered to half-mast, usually on the death of a present or former state official. A law of 1913 authorized the state flag on any public building of the Commonwealth.

Telling it from New York’s flag

Both are blue with arms and an eagle on top. New York’s flag has two women, Liberty and Justice, holding up a shield that shows a sunrise over mountains and a river. Pennsylvania’s supporters are two black horses, and its shield shows a ship, a plough and sheaves of wheat.