I know its awfully unseasonable to post a wintry scene but I wanted to point something out to you in this image. It is the cover of a holiday card depicting the Humanities and Social Sciences Library on a very snowy day. You'll also notice two flags on the card. When my uncle received it last Christmas he asked me why the library would fly a French flag. I thought to myself "that's a good question."

Well, on the card the flag really does look like the French flag but it actually isn’t. You’ll notice that the library still flies two flags at its main entrance but the flag to the right of the building is not the blue, white and red like the French flag but rather blue, white and orange with a blue seal in the middle section. This is the New York City flag and the seal is the New York state seal. Here, on the New York City website, is a brief explanation of the colors and seal of the flag. We also have materials on the city flag in our collection, like poetry written by John Erskine and a report of the flag's adoption in the Milstein Division at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library. If you didn't know that there was such a thing as city flags you may want to take a look at this book which has descriptions and images of 150 American city flags from cities from Akron, Ohio to Yonkers, New York.