Springfield's flag bears the city seal on a blue field: a sheaf of wheat, a caparisoned horse, the arms of England – a rigorous colonial heritage for a city that is home to two of the most joyful American inventions: basketball and Dr. Seuss.
Springfield is the first city founded on the Connecticut River, in 1636, by William Pynchon. It is also the site of the largest settler rebellion before the American Revolution: Shays' Rebellion (1786), when indebted farmers attacked the federal arsenal to prevent the seizure of their property. This revolt so frightened the Founding Fathers that it hastened the drafting of the U.S. Constitution.
He called it "basket ball." The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame is today in Springfield.
Theodor Seuss Geisel – Dr. Seuss – was born here in 1904. "The Cat in the Hat," "Green Eggs and Ham," "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" – he grew up in the streets of Springfield, whose Victorian architecture inspires his absurd landscapes. The blue-and-gold flag cannot represent everything. But it watches over a city where imagination changed world culture, twice.