One of the things I’ve noticed in doing this survey is that, despite the relative dearth of heraldry in this country, and especially as compared with many similarly-sized cities in Europe, there actually is a fair amount of heraldic decoration that can be found here in Dallas. Now, admittedly, the single largest portion of decoration on buildings that might be considered to be heraldic is blank escutcheons. Blank shields, blank ovals, blank cartouches. Great places to actually place heraldry, completely blank. Sometimes heavily decorated around the sides, but with the center, the shield, blank.
Still, there are some decent coats of arms to be found. And today I thought I’d share one of my favorites. The accompanying photo is from above the front entrance of the Magnolia Building at 1401 Commerce Street. The building is actually best known for the large, formerly revolving, neon-lit sign of the red flying Pegasus which has been on its roof since being erected there in 1934. (It was rebuilt in 1999.) The building used to be the headquarters for the Magnolia Petroleum Company, later Socony (Standard Oil of New York), and finally Mobil Oil (now part of Exxon-Mobil) which still uses the red Pegasus as its logo. It is now the 330-room Magnolia Hotel.

I have no idea of the tinctures, of course, as there is neither tricking nor hatching to guide one in determining what the colors should be. And yet, certainly, I should be able to speculate as well as anyone else as to what the tinctures ought to be. Given that the branch itself is probably meant to be "proper", that is to say, brown stem and green leaves, and that magnolia blossoms are white, the presumed blazon (if it were to be tinctured at all, which may not be what the designer had in mind) would be: Or, a branch of magnolia blossomed at the tip proper. But tinctured or not, isn’t that a great bit of canting heraldry?
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