Heraldry in America’s Heartland, Part 4

For our final "coat of arms" found in Omaha, Nebraska, we go to the arms-like logo of the Union Pacific Railroad Company, as mounted onto a marble wall outside the Union Pacific Center there.

The logo of the UPRR is basically a shield of the arms of the United States (well, they do reverse the tinctures of the paly field; in the U.S. arms they are paly of thirteen argent and gules, while on the UP logo they are paly of thirteen gules and argent), with the addition of the words "UNION PACIFIC" one above the other in white letters on the blue chief. Here’s a color version, photographed from the side of a UPRR boxcar.

The bottom line? It’s not "real" heraldry, but it comes close.

Heraldry in America’s Heartland, Part 3

Okay, we’ve looked at an achievement of fake arms, and at a shield that only held some monogrammatic lettering. Today we take a look at some real heraldry.

One of the buildings in downtown Omaha had some blank shields between pairs of neo-Gothic arches spaced regularly about the exterior. ("Why blank shields?", I find myself asking. But in much of the American architecture I’ve looked at, I have found far more blank shields and cartouches and oval shields than I have found with coats of arms or even faux coats of arms carved onto them. As a herald, I find this to be a shame, but I suppose it’s easier, and cheaper, to put up a blank shield than to research an appropriate coat of arms to place on it. But I digress.)

On that same building was an actual, honest-to-goodness crest! No torse, but identifiable as a crest nonetheless. It took just a few minutes of research in Fairbairn’s Crests of the Families of Great Britain and Ireland to learn that it was the crest of Stanley (Northampton) which is blazoned as: An eagle, azure preying on a child proper, swaddled in a basket gules. There are several families which bear a crest of an eagle preying upon an infant, but the Northampton family of Stanley appears to be the only one where the child is not only swaddled but is laid in a basket.

Heraldry in America’s Heartland, Part 2

Continuing our survey of some of the heraldry and pseudo-heraldic devices to be found in downtown Omaha, Nebraska, these come from the exterior of what is now called The Omaha Building.

Built in 1888, probably its most noticeable feature is the statue of the eagle, snake in its claws, with its eaglets in the nest immediately below the rock on which it perches.

But, of course, as a herald the eagle is not what drew my eye first. Shield shapes. That’s what catches my eye. And there was, in two places on the facade, one on either side of the main entrance, these really great shields. No real heraldry, alas, and it took me a little research to figure out what the monogrammatic letters on the shield stood for. While it may be called The Omaha Building now, it was originally built for the New York Life Insurance Company. And if you take just a moment to carefully study the shield, sure enough, you can pretty easily make out N-Y-L-I-C. (There's also that lion's face above and to the left of the "arms", one of a row of such lion's heads along the length of the facade.)

Finally, there was this really great double rose, placed directly over the main entrance to the building. (I won’t call it a Tudor rose, since it has no tinctures, and Tudor roses are always a combination in one way or another of red and white, or more specifically the red rose of Lancaster and the white rose of York.) But what a beautiful piece of carving of a classic heraldic charge.

Heraldry in America’s Heartland, Part 1

I had the opportunity over Labor Day weekend (September 3-5) to attend a conference in Omaha, Nebraska. I was more than happy to go, if only because it was another opportunity to do something I really enjoy: talk about heraldry. There were more reasons than that to go, of course, but still ... I got to talk about heraldry and listen to others talk about heraldry. And for an academic herald, it really doesn’t get much better than that. (Well, maybe if they’ve got pictures, too!)

But as I always try to do when I go someplace new, I dragged out my camera and went looking for representations of coat armour, or at least things that look somewhat like heraldry. And I found some. More, in fact, than I had expected to find, considering that Omaha is not, compared to many cities around the world, all that old. (There’s an old joke about the difference between Europeans and Americans that has a lot of truth in it: Europeans think that a hundred miles is a long way, and Americans think that a hundred years is a long time.) But having found some, I thought I would over the next several posts share with you a few of the best or at least most interesting of what I discovered in the way of heraldry and heraldic-style devices out there in the heartland of the United States.


The most "complete," if you will, was what I call "an achievement of fake arms", a sign hanging over Ashley’s gift shop in the Old Market in Omaha. Parts of it are pretty classic heraldry; other parts are maybe not so much. Yet in a number of ways it comes so close. Good contrast: vert on or on the shield. A castle proper for a crest, atop a barely noticeable torse argent and gules. Two stags proper as supporters, but gorged of yellow bow ties, and standing atop a pair of logs which are then superimposed on one of the old Victorian "gas bracket"-style compartments. And, of course, the "motto" is no such thing, but merely a description of the goods carried by the store.

And yet, what an amazing thing to run across while strolling down the street of a Friday morning!