#CHICAGO FLAG SKIN#
#CHICAGO FLAG PATCH#

The committee chose author, lecturer, and poet Wallace Rice to devise rules for an open competition to design the Chicago flag. Kearnes chaired the commission, which also included prominent Chicagoans such as industrialist Charles Deering and Lawtown S. That year, Mayor William Hale Thompson appointed a municipal flag commission to select a flag design.ДЄlderman James A. The making of the Chicago flag dates to 1915.

#CHICAGO FLAG SKIN#

It waves proudly in front of homes, adorns shop windows, appears on sports uniforms, and has been inked under the skin of thousands of devoted Chicagoans.

#CHICAGO FLAG PATCH#

'Anyone may wear a city flag patch on his own, an Officer Friendly told us,' the article noted.Can you describe the municipal flag of your city? In most cities-even major metropolitan centers-the answer is вЂњNo.вЂќ After all, how often do you see a municipal flag outside of City Hall?ДЄnd yet even residents of other cities recognize the blue and white bars and red stars of the Chicago flag. 'They are now sending away for flags also.'ДЄnd in 1971, the Tribune reported that Chicago police officers had begun wearing a patch of the city flag on their right sleeves that spring. 'You'd be surprised how it boosted morale when some of the men found out my mayor sent it to me,' Lance Cpl. Daley sent flags to some Chicagoans serving in the Vietnam War. Tribune stories suggest it had become more recognizable by the late 1960s, when Mayor Richard J. 'I didn't know what the flag was until I was elected,' Mayor Martin Kennelly remarked in 1948. In spite of its eye-catching design, the flag remained obscure for decades. Rice's six-pointed Chicago stars were back.ДЇinally, in 1939, the council added a fourth star, symbolizing Fort Dearborn, the American military garrison built in 1803 on the site of the future city. But then, two years after Thompson left office in 1931, the council voted to put a third star on the flag - symbolizing 1933's Century of Progress Exposition - and the ordinance described them as 'bright red stars with sharp points, six in number.' In spite of Rice's protest, the City Council voted to change the stars from six to five points. Draw up an ordinance at once changing the stars of the Chicago flag from the British to the American type.' According to The Associated Press, Thompson pointed to a nearby American flag and said: 'The stars in that banner have five points. He demanded to know why it had six-pointed 'British' stars. And in 1928, the municipal flag caught his eye. Thompson even threatened to punch England's King George V 'on the snoot.' Thompson - who'd been an outspoken opponent of American participation in World War I - roared back in the 1927 election, accusing Democrat William Dever's administration of foisting pro-British propaganda on Chicago's schoolchildren.

Thompson 'openly expressed' his 'enthusiastic approval,' according to Rice.Д«ut a decade later, Thompson raised a stink about those stars.ДЄfter serving as mayor from 1915 to 1923, the colorful 'Big Bill' left City Hall. That spring, Rice explained his flag to Mayor William Hale Thompson, telling the Republican about his six-pointed stars. The same vote also designated 'a Y-shaped figure in a circle' as the 'municipal device, for use by the varied unofficial interests of Chicago and its people.'

Aldermen unanimously endorsed Rice's elegant design.