The Tribune article expressing Rice’s discontent with the plan to make the stars five-pointed led me to look in 1928’s council proceedings to find what action, if any, was taked on the proposed ordinance. I assumed, since the current flag sports lovely six-pointed stars, that the ordinance was shunted off to committee or never introduced.

Some time with the indexes to the proceedings revealed that it did indeed come up for a vote on February 15th, 1928 — and the ordinance passed. Which means that the City Clerk should have made the appropriate changes to the city code. However, all the printed and bound editions of the code that the Municipal Reference department can produce all have “six in number” language. I didn’t make careful notes on the exact dates of the volumes, so I can’t be sure the changes were never applied.

However, I’ve yet to see a picture of a flag from the 1928-1933 era, between the time the change was made and the third star was added. Also, the only reference I’ve found to “five-pointed” stars (and what I assumed was a typo) is from a typewritten page by Frederick Rex, one of the municpal librarians. It’s an excerpt from the “Quarterly Bulletin” of the Municipal Employees Society from Sept. 1930.

I’ve checked the indexes to the City Council proceedings from 1928-1939 for further changes to the flag (perhaps undoing the five-to-six point change), but the only actions I could find were the adding of stars. The 1939 ordinance adding the fourth red star for Ft. Dearborn contains the “points, six in number” language, both in the section to be modified and the text to be added.

So, at some point between 1928 and 1939 (or possibly 1933, since I’ve seen three-star flags with six points) they changed the language back, and this action didn’t get picked up by the indexer of the proceedings. It’s also possible that the six-to-five change was never made, which opens a whole other can of worms — what happens when ordinances pass but never make it onto the books?

Alderman Mose presented the following ordinance:

Be it ordained by the City Council of the City of Chicago:

Section 1: That Section 1017 of The Chicago Municipal Code of 1922 be and the same is hereby amended to read as follows:

“1017. The Chicago municipal flag. The Chicago municipal flag shall be white, with two blue bars, each taking up a sixth of its space, and set a little less than one-sixth of the way from the top and bottom of the flag, respectively. There shall be two bright red stars with sharp points, five in number, set side by side, close together, next the staff in the middle third of the surface of the flag.”

Section 2: This ordinance shall be in force and effect from and after its passage and approval.

Unanimous consent was given to permit action on said ordinance without reference thereof to a committee.

Alderman Mose moved to pass said ordinance.

The motion prevailed, by yeas and nays as follows:

Yeas– Coughlin, Anderson, Jackons, Cronson, Grossman, Meyering, Govier, Rowan, Wilson, Hartnett, McDonough, O’Toole, Moran, Coyle, Ryan, McKinlay, Prignano, D. A. Horan, Cepak, Toamn, Arvey, J. H. Bowler, Sloan, Maypole, A. J. Horan, Clark, Smith, Petlak, Kaindl, Nusser, Mills, Adamowski, Rings, Chapman, T. J. Bowler, Haffa, Loescher, Feigenbutz, Nelson, Hoellen, Massen, Frankhauser, Mose — 43.

Nays — None.

Word that Mayor Thompson has ordered preparation of an ordinance to change the stars in the municipal flag from six point to five point yesterday drew a protest from the flag’s designer, Wallace Rice. Mr. Rice designed the flag in 1917 at the request of the mayor, he said. It is now planned to change the stars so that they will conform to those in the national flag, it was stated.

“I purposely made the stars six pointed,” Mr. Rice said yesterday. “Five point stars are the symbols of states and could manifestly have no place in a municipal flag. Mayor Thompson is making not only himself but the flag ridiculous by ordering the change.”

There are two red stars in the municipal flag and two blue stripes on a white background. The stripes, the color, and the stars all have a detailed symbolism, each point of the stars representing a distinct characteristic of the city, Mr. Rice explained.

The proposed ordinance is to be presented to the city council on Feb. 15, it was reported.

To return to the six-pointed stars in the Chicago municipal flag. By the terms of the competition under the rules laid down by the Chicago Flag Commission in 1917, the use of religious symbols, which included the cross, the star and crescent, and the two triangles, one reversed and superimposed, was barred, for obvious reasons. [1] The five-pointed star, symbol of a soverign State, was also considered out of place, for reasons which I hope have been made equally obvious here. Chicago is a city.

After more than four hundred designs had been made by me, I finally struck upon such a six-pointed star as had never appeared in any flag before, peculiarly and singularly a Chicago star, made by a Chicagoan for his greatly loved city, by an American in the tenth generation in this country, whose ancestors had fought against Great Britain, for the most American of American cities. It differs from all other stars in use in European heraldry and in State and National flags and coats-of-arms, and is specifically for and of Chicago and nowhere else on earth because its points are straight and not like the usual heraldric etioile curved like flames, and because these points subtend an angle of only thirty degrees, instead of the sixty degrees subtended in the star made by superimposing a triangle.

1. According my copy of the rules, on file at the Chicago Public Library’s municipal reference collection, no rule specifically bars religious imagery.

Suggestion 7.

The visibility at distances of the several colors and of the different portions of the flag itself should be taken into account in determining its proportions, rather than divisions of mathematical exactitude. In other words, it is the effect of symmetry, not the mere physical fact, which should be taken into account. The French, for example, after extensive experimentation, divide their tricolor so that the blue next the staff has thirty parts in a hundred, the white in the middle thirty-three parts, and the red in the fly thirty-seven, and thus secure the appearance of an equal division.

I suppose this explains why all the descriptions of the flag have tortured syntax — the “slightly less than a sixth” language. Rice wanted the white and blue stripes to appear to have the same width, and so they must be slightly different.

OFFER DESIGN FOR CITY FLAG; WHAT IT MEANS

Design for a Chicago Flag, to be emblematic of a robust municipal ideal, was submitted to the city council yesterday by the Chicago municipal flag commission, appointed by Mayor Thompson eighteen months ago. The commission describes the flag thus:

“Its uppermost stripe, of white, is eight inches broad; the second stripe, of blue, is nine inches; the central bar, of white, is eighteen inches, and the two lower stripes correspond with the uppermost two. Near the staff on the broad white stripe are two six pointed red stars, fourteen inches tall.”

“Viewed locally, the two blue stripes symbolize the Chicago river with its two branches and the three white bars represent the three sides of the city. The red stars stand for the Chicago fire and the World’s fair, two great influences on the city’s history. The six points in the first star stand for transportation, trade, finance, industry, populousness, and healthfulness; those in the second for religion, education, aesthetics, beneficence, justice and civism [sic].”

“Considered nationally, the blue stripes stand for the mountain ranges which flank the plain of which Chicago is the center. The central white bar stands for this plain and the two outer white bars for the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.”

The flag was designed by Wallace Rice, 2701 Best avenue.

This is just a little teaser for series of upcoming posts, where some surprising facts will be revealed:

• Proposed fifth stars for the Chicago Flag, including one that Richard J. Daley planned to “explore”.
• The original two stars on the flag might not represent what you thought!
• How sharp should the points on the stars be? Perhaps even sharper than you imagine!
• Alternative symbolism of the white and blue fields!

Stay tuned!

Next (to) the hoist and two inches from it at the nearest point is a red star fourteen inches tall with six points drawn from a circle six inches in diameter. Two inches from this is a second star of the same size. [...] The two stars stand for the two great formative events in Chicago history, the Great Fire of 1871 and the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. They are given six points each that they may not be confused with the five-pointed stars which stand for the States of the Union in the American Flag.

The bold passage (emphasis mine, obviously) gives us numbers, slightly different from the numbers I calculated in my previous post, “what is the deal with the stars on the chicago flag?”. There, I got:

The outer radius (the circumradius) is 2.4 times the length of the inner radius (which, in Adobe parlance, is the circle which intersects the points of concavity, not the incircle of the hexagon).

The 1917 numbers give an outer radius 2.33 times the inner radius. Let’s compare these stars:

These stars are very, very similar, but more importantly, they’re both pointy. I was going to post a very long entry with all the trigonmetry necessary to show the exact percentage difference in area, but I think I’ll spare you, this time. The key here is that the star was designed to be sharp from the very start, and distinct from the regular hexagram.

Which of the two is most correct? It’s hard to say. I’m pretty sure that Rice’s 1917 14:6 number is just rounding error. He probably just didn’t want to write 14.4 inches. Since the difference is so very small, let’s call them both within the margin of error.

However, the stars on the very same page in the GWAV’s journal are wrong wrong wrong. Those are clearly regular hexagrams in the illustration, 1.73:1 six-pointed stars. I’m going to have to send them a letter.