Our town's colorful history (or where did we find that black and gold?)

Sunday, February 26, 2006
By Patricia Lowry, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette


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Hey there, you in the black-and-gold sweat shirt, jacket, baseball cap, socks and probably underwear: Any idea why you're not wearing, say, red and black or blue and white?

Well, says you, Pittsburgh's colors are black and gold.

Right, but have you any idea why?

Not a clue, says you.

Then allow me to buy you one: One hundred and seven years ago this week, a committee of Pittsburgh councilmen rejected blue and white, red and black, and a number of other chromatic pairs and settled on black and gold as appropriate colors for the city flag.

"Black was selected as one of the colors for several good and sufficient reasons, among them being the fact that both coal and iron, typical of the principal industries of the city, are ebon-hued," reported the Pittsburg Dispatch on Feb. 25, 1899.

"The argument that the pall of smoke hanging over the city is also black, was also a good one," the newspaper continued, at least until councilmen learned that Public Works director Edward Bigelow was "contemplating prosecution of smoke-makers." Pittsburgh had passed its first smoke-control ordinance in 1895, but the courts declared it invalid in 1902. The smoke would hang around for another 50 years.

Now, about the gold, which has a lot to do with the smoke.

"[M]ost of the industries of the city are bringing in golden streams to the city and that prosperity and stability, alike indicated by gold, are characteristics of Pittsburg," the paper said. "There were many other reasons also."

The Dispatch doesn't list them, nor do any other papers of the day. But one of those reasons likely was that black and gold, along with blue and white, appear on the family crest of William Pitt the Elder, first Earl of Chatham, in whose honor the city was named. In 1816, when Pittsburgh was incorporated, it adopted a city seal inspired by the Chatham crest.

The gold of the Chatham coat of arms is literal: three Roman coins that appear against a black background. On the city's seal, the gold coins have morphed into circles, each containing a black bird with outstretched wings.

"There is apparently no particular significance to [the birds'] presence on the seal," wrote Alexander Guffey in 1926, in a paper he presented to the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania.

The blue-and-white checkered band that partitions the Chatham crest also divides the city's seal. Blue and white are the colors of the Chatham livery -- the uniforms worn by male servants and retainers -- and are considered the most important colors of the armorial shield.

"Why were these colors not chosen for the city colors?" Mr. Guffey asked at the end of his paper. "Why then 'black and gold' as suitable and appropriate colors for the City of Pittsburgh?"

The answer might have been lost forever had not Diana Ames, of Friendship, happened upon the Dispatch article last week as she scrolled through microfilmed newspapers at Carnegie Library, in Oakland, while researching the architect Frederick Osterling, her husband's great-uncle.

"I thought, aha, this explains it, this black and gold fever," said Ms. Ames, who also is chair of the city's Shade Tree Commission.

Today, some city fire trucks and hydrants wear the black and gold, as do the jackets of bicycle-riding police officers. And most Pittsburgh cop cars and trash trucks carry the black-and-gold city seal.

Western Pennsylvania teachers and Holocaust survivors took the city colors to Poland last year, wearing gold ball caps emblazoned with black "Pittsburgh" lettering for the annual "March of the Living" from Auschwitz to Birkenau. On the two-mile walk, the bright caps stood out among the thousands of marchers on that dark, rainy May day.

Since the late 1940s, of course, the city's colors also have been carried into the world by Pittsburgh's professional sports teams and their far-flung fans. In 1948, the Pirates replaced their blue and red colors with black and gold, and a year or two later, the Steelers added a black stripe to their gold helmets. The Penguins debuted in 1967 in blue and white, but after the Pirates and Steelers became national champions in 1979, the Pens switched to black and gold the following year.

"The purpose of armory," Mr. Guffey wrote, "was to present simple patches of color as to be recognized at a great distance."

Not unlike the way black and gold is worn today, even if the opponent is never more a football field away.

(Patricia Lowry can be reached at plowry@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1590.)