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2008-07-23-1507-39_edited[1]

 

 

     Harrison Wright, Hal to us, was a charter member of our Club but was with us only three years. He was interested in Heraldry. Hal knew that in the Middle Ages only Knights were allowed to bear arms and they and their leige lords so on developed armorial bearings, also called escutcheons or coats of arms. Later a city or town could also have a coat of arms and so a College of Heralds was founded in London, England, which is still in business today, to check and supervise the art of Heraldry. It evolved its own language to describe a coat of arms and its meaning so that a Knight of old could recognize another Knight on sight by the coat of arms he carried.

     Hal decided that Bronxville should have a coat of arms, so he and his wife designed one, now hanging in the Trustees' Room of the Village Hall. Then he designed one for our Rotary Club Banner. In Heraldic terms it is described as follows:

This escutcheon or coat of arms is parted quarterly. 1 & 3 parted per fesse (horizontal band). In chief a field Argent (silver) with a rayed sun, gules (red), above a body of water, azure (blue), with two bars wavy, argent, indicating a river. 2 & 4 on a field, gules, a chevron (gold), with a broken arrow, gules.

So the escutcheon represents Bronxville by a sun setting in the West over the Bronx River as seen from Sunset Hill and a broken arrow indicating peace with the Indians after Johannes Bronck (for whom Bronxville was named) had purchased the area from Chief Gramatan.

R.H. Scannell 8/25/75 former Bronxville Rotarian