Flag of Chicago

Flag of Chicago

Use	Civil flag
Proportion	2:3
Adopted	Original, 1917; additional stars added, 1933 and 1939.
Design	Argent four mullets of six points gules in fess between two bars bleu de ciel.
Designed by	Wallace Rice

The flag of Chicago consists of two light blue horizontal bars, or stripes, on a field of white, each bar one-sixth the height of the full flag, and placed slightly less than one-sixth of the way from the top and bottom. Four bright red stars, with six sharp points each, are set side by side, close together, in the middle third of the flag's surface.^[1]

Chicago is a city in Illinois, United States. Its flag was adopted in 1917 after the design by Wallace Rice won a City Council sponsored competition. It initially had two stars until 1933, when a third was added. The four-star version has existed since 1939. The three sections of the white field and the two bars represent geographical features of the city, the stars symbolize historical events, and the points of the stars represent important virtues or concepts. The historic events represented by the stars are the establishment of Fort Dearborn, the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, and Century of Progress Exposition of 1933–34.

In a review by the North American Vexillological Association of 150 American city flags, the Chicago city flag was ranked second-best with a rating of 9.03 out of 10, behind only the flag of Washington, D.C.^[2]