NYNew York State Symbols

New York's official symbols

New York's defining symbol is its coat of arms, the design that fills the centre of the state flag and the great seal. Liberty and Justice stand on either side of a Hudson River scene, with a royal crown lying discarded at Liberty's feet to mark the break with Britain. Below it runs a single Latin word, Excelsior, adopted in 1778 while the Revolution was still being fought. Most of the state's later symbols are far more homely, running from the sugar maple and the apple to a state muffin.

What is on the New York state flag

The flag is a dark blue field carrying the state coat of arms. On the shield, the sun rises in gold over the Hudson Highlands, with a sloop and a square-rigged ship sailing the river below, an image of trade moving inland. Above the shield sits a crest of a bald eagle perched on a globe showing the North Atlantic.

Two figures support the shield. On the left is Liberty, holding a staff topped with a Phrygian cap; a royal crown lies on the ground at her foot, the point being independence from the British monarchy. On the right is Justice, blindfolded, with a sword in one hand and scales in the other. The scroll underneath reads Excelsior, meaning ever upward. In 2020 the state added the words E pluribus unum to that scroll, the first change to the arms in generations.

The flag itself was not always blue. From the Revolution onward the field was buff, the colour of Continental Army facings, and it stayed that way until the legislature switched it to dark blue in 1901.

The great seal

The great seal places the same arms inside a circle reading "The Great Seal of the State of New York". The arms were fixed by the new state government in 1778, only two years after independence was declared, and the design has been standardised several times since, most thoroughly in 1882. Because the arms are almost a landscape painting rather than heraldry, New York's seal reads as a scene rather than a badge: a river, hills, a sunrise and two allegorical figures who between them stand for freedom and law.

Symbols that surprise people

• A state muffin. The apple muffin was adopted in 1987 after a campaign by elementary school pupils in North Syracuse who wanted their state fruit represented at breakfast.
• A state fossil that is a sea scorpion. Eurypterus remipes lived in shallow seas across what is now central New York some 420 million years ago and was named the state fossil in 1984.
• A state insect that has nearly vanished. The nine-spotted ladybug was chosen in 1989 and then became so rare in New York that it was thought gone from the state until a rediscovery on Long Island.
• A garnet mined for grinding wheels. The state gem, adopted in 1969, is the deep red almandine garnet from Gore Mountain in the Adirondacks, long quarried as an industrial abrasive.
• A crown on the flag. Almost no one notices the discarded royal crown at Liberty's feet, the sharpest political statement in the whole design.

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