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Cooperstown, New York (U.S.)

Otsego County

Last modified: 2024-10-19 by rick wyatt
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[Flag of Cooperstown, New York] image by Masao Okazaki, 31 December 2023



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Description of the flag

The first flag of the village was designed by Oliver Wasson, a recent graduate of Cooperstown Central School, and was adopted by the Village Board of Trustees on January 23, 2023.

The proposal and adoption of the flag appear in the newsletter Village Voices: https://www.cooperstownny.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/2023-02.pdf
The description of the flag by its designer in the NAVA magazine Vexillum 24:

The field of the flag offers multiple different interpretations: the blue (representing our lake) and the green (representing our natural beauty) can be seen as a top-down view of Cooperstown, where Otsego Lake, source of the Susquehanna River, stretches to the village. The subtle home plate design points to Cooperstown as the “home plate of baseball” (according to a now-discredited legend, the sport was invented in Cooperstown by Abner Doubleday). The background can also be seen from the perspective of looking out at the horizon of the lake, with the green being the valleys surrounding our village and lake. Of course, the home plate could be on a baseball field of green—the interpretation is based on what one sees in it.

The architectural column gives the flag a very distinguished, scholarly look, representing Cooperstown’s museums and rich cultural history (the column is a very common architectural element in our village). The column itself has three different components, representing the Baseball Hall of Fame, the Fenimore Art Museum, and the Farmers' Museum. The column, a significant symbol representing the arts, literature, and medicine that dates to the ancient Greeks, has a wave-like trim that furthers the imagery of the glimmering lake. Lastly, I chose the column as a good symbol for the field of the flag as it represents our community and everyone’s impact. The gray “keystone” shows how our community culture supports our village. It also represents Council Rock, a large boulder on the shore of Lake Otsego that has a prominent place in the novels of James Fenimore Cooper. It can be seen as a baseball diamond.
Masao Okazaki, 31 December 2023