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Norfolk, Virginia (U.S.)

Independent City

image by António Martins-Tuválkin, 27 March 2008
based on an image at www.waymarking.com

Description of the flag
Detail of seal

See also:

Description of the flag

The municipal flag was very prominently displayed on public buildings and on the stages of the school auditoria in the three schools which I attended in that city. As I recall, it consisted of a navy blue (i.e., very dark blue) flag with a horizontal gold stripe running through the middle of the flag. In the centre of this stripe was the municipal seal, which is very striking. On either side of the seal were the words 'City of (seal) Norfolk, Virginia' in black Olde English lettering. The blue and gold colours were chosen to reflect the city's historic traditions with the navy - before 1776 with the Royal Navy and after that with the USN.
Ron Lahav, 22 February 2004

The NAVA image at www.nava.org/Flag%20Design/City%20Survey%202004/city_flag_photos/Norfolk.jpg and shown in the American Flag Survey (2004) and American City Flags (Purcell, 2003) matches Ron's description. I'd add that the height of the golden yellow stripe seems to be one third of the flag height, and that the overall flag ratio seems to be 3:5.
António Martins-Tuválkin, 27 March 2008

With respect to the Norfolk city flag itself, the use of an Old English type face for the lettering on each side of the city seal is a result of a conscious decision to copy the type face used for the leading newspaper in Norfolk (and more recently in all of Tidewater Virginia), the Virginian-Pilot, formerly known as the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot. The Pilot has dominated Norfolk and more recently all of southeastern Virginia since the last quarter of the 19th Century. It was the Pilot which organized the movement for a Norfolk City Flag (the exact date slips my mind, but I believe that it was during the interwar period), and in recognition of the newspaper's work in this regard the City Council at the time (it might still have been the Board of Aldermen) adopted the type face used by the newspaper. Over the years the paper's type face has changed, both externally and for the inside pages, and for a time I seem to recall that the lettering used on the Norfolk city flag would change to reflect this. Sometimes the face used on the interior pages, notably on the editorial page, would differ from that used on the masthead. The version which I saw in our family synagogue during my visit had a slightly different version of the type face, more in keeping with the present masthead usage; the type face used on the flag shown above seems to me to resemble that used on the editorial page of the Pilot when I was growing up, during the 1950s and 1960s.
Ron Lahav, 29 March 2008

Detail of Seal

image by António Martins-Tuválkin, 27 March 2008

At norfolk.gov/planning/Images/Norfolk%20Seal.gif there's a large b/w image of the seal. See <us-vanf).gif> attached, matching the colors used for the seal on the flag. Non-flag uses of the seal seem to be fully colored, as shown at http://www.norfolk.gov/About/Seal.asp, www.ich.gov/newsletter/images/norfolk_seal.jpg, or en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:NorfolkSeal.gif.

At www.burnhammarket.com/pages/norfolk.html it says that the "Norfolk seal can often be found in the waters around the Norfolk coast"; local vexillologists with scuba diving gear may want to check.

António Martins-Tuválkin, 27 March 2008

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