Last modified: 2006-07-15 by rick wyatt
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image by Ivan Sache, 3 June 2006
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The City of Livonia and Wayne County flags appear in the fourth photo on
this page. The Livonia flag is white with city seal in the middle.
Valentin Poposki, 25 March 2006
The City of Livonia (c. 36 sq. miles; 100,545 inhabitants in 2000) is the
second largest city in Wayne County and the eighth largest city in Michigan. The
region of Livonia was originally inhabited by Potowatami Indians. In the XIXth
century, pioneers from New England and New York settled the area. Livonia is the
name of a town in New York State and of a former duchy
on the Baltic Sea. The boundaries of the Township of Livonia were set on 17
March 1835 by an Act of territorial legislature. The city remained rural until
the late 1940s, when General Motors and Ford opened there a transmission plant
and parts depot, respectively. The Michigan Racing Association built a race
track in Livonia in 1949 and the Township decided to incorporate in order to
benefit from the racetrack revenues; after a popular vote, the entire Township
was incorporated into the City of Livonia on 23 May 1950. The population grew
from 17,000 in 1950 to more than 100,000 in 1988. The city has preserved its
heritage through the Greenmead Historical Village, a 103-acre farm-museum of
Livonia's history.
On 17 May 2006, Mayor Jack Engebretseon announced the unveiling of the new city
flag at the dedication of the Livonia Veterans Memorial Plaza on 27 May, saying:
"At the Dedication of our beautiful Veterans Memorial Plaza, we will
ceremoniously raise the United States flag, the
State of Michigan flag, the Wayne County flag, the
POW-MIA flag, and the City of Livonia flag,” the Mayor
said. The flag was designed by long-time Livonia resident Van Nazarian at the
Mayor's request. It is blue with the city's seal in the middle. The seal shows a
wheat sheaf, representing the rural past of the city, alongside a modern
landscape representing the Livonia of today. The shield on top of the seal bears
the motto "In God We Trust", surmounting three stars.
After the Livonia official website.
In his article "Livonia plans to wave its first city flag this weekend",
published in "Detroit Free Press"
on 23 May 2006, Zlati Meyer gives
additional details on the flag. The Mayor said that the blue in the new flag
alludes to the similar shade that's on the Michigan state flag. However, the
designer of the flag "notes that Livonia's emblems have often been done in those
colors; for example, the wooden city seal, carved out of golden lumber, that
presides over the City Hall auditorium and the burnished-yellow versions affixed
to some city vehicles."
The ratio of the flag is 3:5.
Ivan Sache, 3 June 2006
Note that an artist's depiction of a future Memorial Plaza is online at
http://ci.livonia.mi.us. It shows a white flag. But that depiction was made
before the city announced what its flag would look like- so the seal on white
city flag was just a placeholder that the artist devised for the sake of his
illustration in the then-absence of a real city flag.
Ned Smith, 4 June 2005