The city put together the Ad-Hoc City Seal Working Group to look into replacing the city’s official seal. The group solicited public input, held public meetings, looked at the various problems with the current seal and made generalized recommendations for a replacement seal. Here’s their final report.
The current seal, designed in the 1865 depicts the scene of “John Eliot Preaching to the Indians”.
Two things that I found most interesting in the final report are that the town of Natick’s seal has a near identical image and that the Newton seal has a long series of slight variations and mutations of its own seal – check out all the photos in Appendix B (pages 33-47).
The mayor has forwarded the group’s recommendation to the City Council for a vote to proceed with a redesign. Once approved the city will hire a graphic designer to create a new seal and the City Council would ultimately vote on approving any new design.
Here’s John Hilliard’s story in the Boston Globe about the seal re-design effort
What do you think of today’s city seal? Is it time for a new one?
I’m hoping the city goes with my more up to date theme that focuses on communication and civic engagement , with a nod to my Upper Falls neighborhood 😉
LOVE this! When you make them into refrigerator magnets, I’ll take a dozen
It’s long past time to get rid of Newton’s racist seal. It would have been gone years ago if our elected “leaders” had a lick of humility or common sense.
We have so many artists in Newton a seal design competition would be fun.
I believe the Vietnam Memorial in DC was done by competition, Newton could get similarly innovative ideas.
– like Jerry’s!
Should we make a list of racist movies which should be banned from Newton public libraries?
I’ll start with “breakfast at Tiffany’s”
Bugek A movie isn’t authored by a group of people with the intent of representing that group of people.
You’re comparing apples to lingerie because you have a thing against political correctness.
sometimes rebranding is a good thing to do. companies do it all the time. the process should help people define what’s important to them. nothing wrong with a little self-examination.
Wow – Talk about a false equivalency.
Ben glad you liked it. I think it was the most creative thing I wrote today.
As an Asian person, I find Mickey Rooney in Breakfast highly offensive. Period.
Only affluent non POC liberals get to decide what is racist.
Yes.
According to the report, representatives from some of the local tribes were part of the decision making.
Natick remembers John Elliot with a monument, the John Elliot Elementary School in Needham, and the town of Elliot, Maine were named in his honor.. John Elliot was the founder of the Roxbury Latin School, the Pastor of a church for 58 years, and a Missionary who cared deeply for the American Indians.. John Elliot had a very good relationship with the Indians and learned to speak their language.. He donated land to establish schools. The donation required that both Black and Native American students be accepted, which was unusual at the time. . Pastor John Elliot taught the Native Americans how to read, and translated the Bible and 20 other books into their language.. The 1st Bible published in America was written in the dialect of the Native Americans..John Elliot brought cases to Court to fight for Indian property rights..He pleaded for clemency for convicted Indian prisoners, he fought the selling of Indians into slavery, John Elliot sought to secure lands and streams for Indian use, he established schools for Native American children and adults.. John Elliot traveled on foot and on horseback, well past the age of 80, to visit and advocate for the Native Americans.. John Elliot does not deserve to be demonized by divisive, virtue signaling Newton politicians.. Not a dime of your tax dollars should be squandered to remove John Elliot from the City’s seal.
why wasn’t this factual information of John Elliot disclosed during the discussion of said ‘racist’ seal? the facts don’t fit the narrative?
A number of those facts were mentioned in the Working Group’s report. (Elliot learned the Algonquin language, created the Algonquin written language, taught Native Americans to read, and translated the bible into Algonquin).
Nothing in the report that I can see contradicts any of the facts that JGranbo mentioned.
@JGranbo– Whitewash much? I haven’t read a single negative comment here about John Elliot, the man. This is not about John Elliot. It’s about the image on an official City Seal that many people [myself included] view as racist.
Hi Lucia, I know your suggestion that we hold a contest comes from a good place; however, the design of a graphic seal representing 90K people across 13 diverse villages relevant today and for generations to come is a serious design project.
Developing an original design concept is a process that should be informed by strategy, research, iteration, and feedback. It’s time-consuming work best done by an experienced paid professional – The same way we might hire an architect or a lawyer.
Not to mention asking a skilled, experienced artist or designer to work on spec. is disrespectful of their time and talent. If we have lots of talented artists and designers in Newton, we should hire the one we feel is best for the job and pay them well.
Logo design & brand development for startups is a big part of my professional work. In my opinion, the decision to redesign Newton’s logo/seal now was a good call.
To design a mark that resonates with most folks, the designer will need to get at the essence of who we are as a city. I think what will make this logo particularly challenging is that I’m not sure we know who we are right now.
That said, Jerry seems to have a starting point 🙂
Perhaps a happy medium is to have the seal professionally done – I think a lot of the research and intricacies you mention are only achievable by that – but to have the logo application that the panel suggested creating, made by a local artist based on the professionally designed seal.
This!
When I first moved to Newton, when I pointed in response to criticism of how the city managed building that out that my job/industry (project controls) is ONLY monitoring and managing project costs and schedule – project managers do 100’s things (too!) to get the project built. And that a volunteer oversight committee (the proposed solution) wasn’t going to have the have the education/ skills/ tools to do this without reinventing the wheel, so we should allot money to just hire skilled owner-project-managers and owners-project-controls.
The response? I should volunteer to oversee the towns building projects. Clearly the proposed volunteer committee needed me!
No thank you. We all have things we’re good at and things we’re … not – goodness knows I couldn’t make a seal if my life depended on it – but work should be paid.
Just because it’s art (or artistic?) doesn’t mean it’s not work.
(Also, yes. We should have a better seal. It will never be as iconic as the Chicago flag, but what we have now is racist and not even distinct!)
In that case maybe the new seal will retain Eliot’s likeness but with an updated surrounding image.
Stop the presses. Cancel the committee meetings. Logo is designed and delivered.
You’re welcome.
Does this mean I can’t move to Waltham now?
YES!
Maybe Congressman J. Crewchincloss can once again chime in with his two half-bits about how this is “taking political correctness too far.”
https://twitter.com/masspeaceaction/status/1289302772010094596
How about a map of Newton highlighting the 13 villages juxtaposed with all 7 hills. I was told many years back that Rome and Newton are the only two cities with 7 hills and I don’t know of another American municipality our size that has 13 rather definable villages with no real downtown area or central business district (CBD). How about a new slogan (13 villages and one community).
Well, considering how much we all argue about housing, the slogan could be:
Newton: Making it Difficult to Live Here since 1688!
Or just a logo of the Pike running through Newton with the slogan:
Newton: City of Divisions!
In all seriousness, how often does anyone notice the Official Seal? It certainly doesn’t seem particular grand or historic. No objection at all to a new one, or simply no “official seal” at all.
The report says that Mass General Laws require each town to have a seal. Maybe this one could be ours.
If the City decided the seal could use an update, fantastic. But why does everything have to be racist in nature? “Preaching” can easily be “presenting”. I have neither read the report in full nor am a Newton historian but wasn’t John Eliot well intended? Is an image of NBA commissioner Adam Silver presenting to African American players racist?
PS. Glad to see you and Marie are feeling better, Jerry!
@Matt – those people did a lot of forcible converting. As someone from a group that has been subject to a lot of forced conversion and persecution for not converting (or even after doing so), I do not want a seal with a Christian working to convert the “heathen” representing my home town. If you’d rather not think in terms of racism, then think about it in terms of religious persecution, which is what the Puritans were known for.
Has anyone stopped to consider the price tag associated with changing the seal. We are talking millions. Look out your window and look at the condition of our of roadways. Walk through our public buildings that are in need of renovation and mold remediation.
We are very quick to identify things that have existed for hundreds of years and try to change them because the optics of them are questionable to a small collective. We are quick to try and change our history and pretend these things never happened instead of acknowledging it.
The funds needed to make this change can be allocated elsewhere to improve the quality of life for all of our resident, not just to appease a small group of people because they are shouting then loudest.
We are NOT talking millions. For you anyone who is not you is a small group of people not worth paying attention. Why should we pay attention to you? The current seal will be documented for the history as well as the fact that people is not a narrow minded garbage that can’t leave this clearly odd image stand.
Amen!
I don’t understand what you’re saying? That my comment is not worth paying attention to? I didn’t know we all need to fall in line and have the same point of view, otherwise we are just wrong. That it’s narrow minded garbage? If we can’t have a discussion about things like this that’s unfortunate. I think that would mean you would be perceived as narrow minded…..
And we are talking millions to change the seal over time. Even if you phase out paper supplies with the seal on it over time, we are talking about the seal being present in probably every pubic building in the city. Someone else in this thread has also commented on a list of items we need to change. We are talking city vehicles with the seal on them, uniforms, badges, etc for our fire and police. Street signs, memorials, plaques, welcome signs (like the one near BC). That’s just a quick list there’s plenty of other items I can’t think of.
Small detail, Worcester also has 7 hills. Newton’s brand has always been convenient commute to Boston, and 128 technology Highway. And schools. Schools. Schools. I propose a seal that incorporates the Marathon around where the B line terminates on Commonwealth Ave with BC in the background.
At first, I thought millions to change the seal was an exaggeration, but think about it …
All Letterhead, Legal documents and forms, City Flags, Road Signs, Police/Fire fire uniform patches and vehicles, Edits to websites and social media, monuments and memorial plaques, it’s carved into buildings and displayed, and decorative floor mosaics …
It would be nice to have a mark that better represents the city – A English immigrant dude who lived in Roxbury and Dorchester converting native Americans in Wabin to Christianity is hardly relevant or even a noteworthy event we need to memorialize.
It would be smart however to calculate the total cost of changing the seal. Maybe it’s a gradual change as things need to be replaced.
You could mitigate most of those costs by phasing it in. Letterhead gets used up. Seals get replaced over time. It doesn’t have to be all at once. Perhaps the city councilors could let us know. I would be more than happy to slow roll the roll-out if it saves money. I think the key thing is that the official seal is different going forward. The idea of a quick change seems ill timed when we have so many other priorities.
I’ve been through this at a job decades ago. They mitigated a large part of the waste this way.
Name the graphic design firm behind the American flag. Professionalizing the process eliminated the 2/3 s Americans without associate or bachelor degrees from participating. I’m not saying designers/artists shouldn’t be paid. Just that an open contest for the seal’s concept design would be more inclusive – and fun!
A graphic design firm could finalize the winning design concept, like Jim suggested above.
PS the most recent design of the US flag was by a high schooler:
“Ohioan Robert G. Heft designed the fifty-star United States flag. Stanley Pratt, Heft’s teacher at Lancaster High School, asked his students to design a flag for the admittance of Hawaii and Alaska as states in the United States. Heft chose to arrange the fifty white stars on a blue background in alternating horizontal rows. Five rows had six stars, and four rows had five stars. Seven alternating horizontal red and six white stripes completed the flag, representing the original thirteen colonies. The flag’s three colors, red, white, and blue, represent respectively courage, purity, and justice. It took Heft 12.5 hours to sew the flag together.
Stanley Pratt gave Heft a B- as the grade for the flag. Pratt supposedly stated that Heft’s design lacked originality, but the teacher did offer to raise the grade if Heft could get the flag accepted as the United States’ national flag. Heft sent his flag to Walter Moeller, his Ohio Congressman. Moeller succeeded in having Heft’s design adopted as the new United States flag on July 4, 1960.”
https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Robert_G._Heft
https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Robert_G._Heft
Lucia, when we’re done with that, maybe we can have fifth graders design the new senior center. You can never have too much fun.
Mike – a building is a little different than a sketch, which is essentially what our logo is. Is there a reason you feel so strongly about professionalizing the process and not having a design contest?
Correction – it eliminates 68% of Americans without a Bachelor’s and 58% without a Bachelor’s or Associates’s degree.
There they go changing history again. It’s as if they have nothing better to do than to fiddle around with these picayune issues. Maybe next they’ll pull down the Johnny Kelly statue. I heard he was a racist. This is America in a nutshell; grifter politicians fiddling while America burns.
how about a city motto!!!!!
if you ain”t rich and lily white
take a hike!!!!!!!!!!!!
American Indians are being marginalized. Their images, names etc. are being removed one after another. Soon they will be totally forgotten.
I like the seal.
That motto isn’t quite fair. Once upon a time Newton, overtly or not, did attempt to exclude “undesirables” from living here, and then they were directed to selected neighborhoods. Certain private clubs excluded members on the basis of race and religion.
These practices have faded away; progress has been made. Now wealth is the great filter. The population is both more ethnically diverse and more economically exclusive.
That being said, let’s change the seal but use up the old stationery first. That’s environmentally prudent.
Yes, the present seal is dated. While I wouldn’t say it’s hateful at all, it certainly is cringe-worthy at this point.
Bob Burke has the right idea with the 13 villages and 7 hills… plus the river, I think. Commission a local artist (there are plenty). First World problem solved.
Generally agree with this. Revise the seal, be cost-effective about it (ex. gradually use up existing City stationary), and use local, professional talent where possible. Hold the side dish of sanctimony.
Yes, Adam B. Even though many people find the image on the city seal racist, it’s very important to not waste any of the stationary. Yikes!
As city correspondence gets more virtual, replacing stationery isn’t really an issue–almost everything official I have sent out was via email with a virtual seal.
I believe many notices are also created virtually first–and printed with the seal onto a blank piece of paper.
So not much to waste there. The city seals on buildings may take awhile.
@Bob– With all due respect, “once upon a time” is for fairy tales and Quentin Tarantino movies. City seal aside, do you really think Newton’s racist practices have “faded away”? In my opinion, very little has actually been accomplished on the issue of race. While I didn’t like Joe Rizza’s comment [above], it unfortunately rings as true today as 50 years ago.
Well, when I started teaching at Newton South in 1981, the student population was much less heterogeneous than now. Certain country clubs and neighborhood clubs
(I’d rather not name them but the old-timers know) did not admit Jews and Blacks as members. In the 50s, certain ethnic groups were directed to specific neighborhoods and not to others. Check out the history of Waban written by man (forgot the name)who grew up in Newton during World War 2 (you can find it in the Waban Library Center). The author acknowledges the anti-Semitism prevalent in that era.
These days people can move into anywhere in Newton if they can afford the rather high housing costs, an obstacle of a different sort. A student at South may speak one of a few dozen different languages at home. I can tell from my tennis team’s composition that Newton is a much more welcoming community indeed…if ya got the dough!
Why not mention the names of those racist club if they still today? Surely, they should be forced to close down for profiting over racist policies…
During the mid-1930’s, my folks were one of the first Irish American Catholic families to move into our corner of Newton Highlands. My dad was blond and the rumor began going around that he was actually a Swedish Lutheran who my mom had forced to convert to Catholicism as a condition of marriage. My dad’s father was actually born in Cork County, Ireland in 1850 and it’s a bit amazing that his grandson is still around to tend the family grave. Be that as it may, my folks were always somewhat suspicious of some of their Protestant neighbors, but I didn’t find it impeded my friendship with their kids at all. And I really do think that a good deal of my folk’s concerns were overblown. My folks were extremely likable and civic minded. I think a lot of the stereotypes our neighbors had about their background vanished when they got to really know them. It may not have cured their stereotypes of Boston Irish altogether, but it was, at least, a start.
There were simply no Jews in my neighborhood and very few in the Hyde School where I attended elementary school. My folks came from an Irish American enclave in Brighton where again, there were few Jewish residents. They were staunch New Deal Democrats and always considered Jews to be an important part of that coalition, but they had no Jewish friends or associates. Purely by chance, I became inoculated against Anti Semitic propaganda by a book on the Holocaust I read at an early age, but there was a strong uptick in vicious often violent attacks against Jews that spread even to this City during the early 50s. It infected several of my closest friends and I really didn’t know how to respond. I didn’t get to know any Jewish kids until I went to Newton High and teamed up with many of them on the school’s debating team. I found we had so much in common and the Jewish students I got to know seemed more willing to talk about their fears and frustrations than non-Jewish kids did.
I found then, and rediscovered later, that the destructive bonds of hatred, bigotry, bogus stereotypes and pessimism diminish when people get to know and work with each other. The good and not so good in all of us has been forged far more by the 500,000 years we all spent as hunter gatherers than the 10,000 or so years we’ve lived in set communities.
I don’t believe in Cancel Culture, and every person or business or institution has the potential to learn from its mistakes and to progress. Although Abraham Lincoln
always opposed slavery, he was not convinced at first that Whites and freed Blacks could coexist peacefully. Over time he abandoned his belief in “recolonizing” Blacks to Africa and came to accept that their future lay in full citizenship in the United States.
People evolve, and that is a good thing. Thus, it makes no sense to use decades-old historical sins to punish people in the present. There, I have said it.
Anything more than two minutes applying WordArt to “Newton MA” in PowerPoint to create a seal would be gigantic waste of the city’s resources.
You said it well, Bob.
Bravo to Bob Jampol and Bob Burke. Great posts.
Regarding the city seal, perfectly good to reimagine and update your ‘brand’ as time goes on.
If a picture of eliot(who helped and advocated for native americans) speaking to native americans is considered racist ….then is a picture of a newton resident paying a POC to clean their toilets and deliver their food considered racists too?
Bugek, did you read the report or is this just a talking point?
As for your question, yes it would be if it was our city seal.
Its talking point, you ‘could’ find racism in everything if you wanted to look hard enough.
We probably have street names which could be considered racist. Why stop there.
Perhaps we should have a ordinance which enforces pictures of people of different races be shown on equal footing?
Ie the mayor can never be photographed for any official city photo lecturing or speaking to any groups of POC. You see the slipperly slope
A few thoughts on the seal debate and its context.
The report rightly focuses on the seal, not in detail on John Eliot. It rightly points out the somewhat tangential relationship between the elements of the seal and Newton. According to the report, neither Eliot nor Waban have an especially lasting connection to the city, though the symbolism is tied “integrally” to Newton’s founding as one of the fourteen praying towns. The seal came about a long time after the the event, and the report points out some of the reasons why. It’s worth a read.
The irony of the scene depicted on the seal is that it may have represented the high water mark for the indigenous peoples during the colonial era. By the accounts I have read, John Eliot was invested in the native peoples lives and well-being. He learned their language. He learned their customs. He defended their property rights. When King Philip’s War brought heart breaking persecution to the native tribes, John Eliot was persecuted and physically attacked for bringing them supplies. Eliot donated 80 acres of land in Jamaica Plain for what is now known as the Eliot School on the condition that native and Black students be admitted without discrimination. That’s in the late 1600’s.
Our history would have been far different, I believe, if Eliot’s view of the native peoples of this land had been pervasive. Imperfect, for sure, as any relationship between an indigenous and a colonial power would be. Yes, Eliot was a Christian missionary. His duty and his calling was to spread Christianity. The report seems to judge this fact, and perhaps dismiss Waban’s adoption of Christian beliefs as having ulterior motives.
I think that’s reading too much into the unknowable, what people believed and didn’t believe. John Eliot didn’t preach from the barrel of a gun. And the tradition of Waban’s and other Indians’ Christian beliefs survive to this very day with the Natick Praying Indians, the remaining tribe. I only know what I have read about them, but they don’t view Eliot as a conquerer nor their religious beliefs as imposed. They believe what they believe.
It is fascinating learning about the rich tapestry of these historical events, which indeed deal with the founding history of Newton and other towns and cities in eastern Massachusetts. This history is rich and vibrant, and we do it a disservice to pigeonhole it into our own preconceptions or stereotypes.
That’s all fine, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be on the seal. That’s a parallel topic.
One thing I realized during the last few years, though. Symbols are funny things. They are abbreviations or mile markers for ideas. And as abbreviations, they don’t capture the subtlety or nuance of the real deal. That’s the power and the problem of symbols.
We need to accept that no one symbol fully and accurately represents a city of 90,000 people with a long history and a wide range of beliefs and opinions. It’s ironic that we are discussing choosing a symbol when it seems quite challenging for Newton to come to strong consensus about most anything.
So I really don’t envy any individual or consultant who may choose or by chosen to create a new seal. I wouldn’t want the job for certain. Getting agreement on “what represents Newton?” from this city, at this time, and turning it into a symbol that has design strength (even excellence!) and practicality – that’s a monumental designer’s challenge. It’s even hard to say, “who’s the customer?”
Best of luck to them!