On Tuesday evening, the Newton City Council approved a new city seal following four years of discussion and planning.
Newton Mayor Ruthanne Fuller kickstarted the process in 2020 when she decided the preexisting city seal was no longer relevant or appropriate for the City of Newton. The previous city seal depicted a missionary, John Eliot, evangelizing indigenous people.
After the city council decided to update the seal, Fuller created the City Seal Working Group, which included city councilors, government officials, residents, and a designer, Sebastian Elliot Ebarb.
“In the fall of 2020, I convened an ad-hoc City Seal Working Group to look at our city seal,” Fuller said in a survey to Newton residents and on the City of Newton’s website. “I asked them to make recommendations about whether the image depicted is still relevant and meaningful 155 years after its creation.”
The working group generated three different designs for the new seal. The first two portrayed different parts of city hall, while the last one was an image of a tree with the Charles River in the background, a nod to Newton’s reputation as the “Garden City.”
Ward 3 Councilor Julia Malakie described the different options for the seal.
“I don’t know exactly what or when, but what we ended up having the option for the public to vote on was only A, B, and C,” Malakie said. “A and B being different versions of portions of city hall and C being the tree that looked like broccoli next to a river that looked like a dirt road.”
The seal the councilors voted on Tuesday incorporated a design of Newton City Hall from across the ponds in front of it. On the border of the seal, the words “City of Newton” and “Massachusetts” are written in an identical format to the original version of Newton’s city seal.
The year 1688 is also on the seal, which is when an independent township was established in Newton. “Liberty” and “Union” are on the left side of the exterior of the seal, which are Newton’s core community values. “Thirteen Villages” is written on the right side of the seal. The color orange illuminates the city hall since both of Newton’s high schools use the color.
Ebarb, who also worked on Natick’s seal and was the design director for the City of Boston, described his design process.
“I spent a bunch of time in the wonderful city, just hanging out, checking things out, spending time, and getting to know the locations,” Ebarb said.
Malakie said the process of getting community feedback was rushed due to when the survey was sent out.
“I also thought all of us should have time to read the responses to the January public survey, which only got uploaded to the Friday packet a few hours before our Feb. 3 meeting—hard for even somebody without a day job to review,” Malakie said.
Newton City Council was originally supposed to vote on the new seal on Feb. 3, but Ward 5 Councilor Bill Humphrey called for a motion to delay the vote to allow more time for the council to review public opinion.
Malakie recited the public’s responses to the seal’s survey.
“126 liked the simplicity, but 69 said [it looked like] some version of childish cartoonish or like clip art,” Malakie said. “50 said something like uninspired, boring, bland. 67 like nothing. 62 said keep the original … 24 wanted something more unique to Newton.”
Malakie agreed the seal looked childish and urged the city council to take more time approving it.
“Doing this right is more important than doing it right now,” Malakie said.
Ward 4 Councilor-at-Large Leonard Gentile agreed with Malakie.
“It just doesn’t look very stately or very impressive to me,” Gentile said. “It doesn’t feel right.”
Ebarb explained there was a reason for the apparent simplicity of the seal’s design.
“So it is simplified to a certain extent,” Ebarb said. “This allows for humans to replicate it, for machines to replicate it … for official purposes, to be able to do that safely, efficiently, quickly.”
Ward 4 Councilor-at-Large Joshua Krintzman noted the council’s vote wouldn’t be the end of the process.
“I just want to remind folks that this isn’t actually the end of the process even if it’s approved tonight,” Krintzman said. “If this deal is approved by the city council, this is essentially an indication that the city council supports this design and will then have to go about crafting the ordinance.”
Ward 7 Councilor-at-Large Rebecca Grossman appreciated the design and voted in favor.
“I think it looks really nice,” Grossman said. “I also think the process was thorough and thoughtful and professional and appropriate. I believe that when it comes to design [it’s in] the eyes of the beholder … I don’t want to see this process continue.”
Ward 2 Councilor-at-Large Tarik Lucas said he wanted to highlight different aspects of Newton because he thought that putting city hall on the seal overstated the importance of government.
“Government over Newton’s history—government over nature,” Lucas said. “I don’t think that should be on the new seal … I think there could have been better alternative designs.”
Contrarily, Ward 5 Councilor-at-Large Andreae Downs appreciated the incorporation of city hall in the design of the seal.
“As long as we are a democracy—and God I hope we remain a democracy—where our decisions are made democratically by our elected official … as a city, it is more us than a tree,” Downs said. “This is where we make decisions for ourselves or where we the people that we elect make decisions to govern ourselves. I think it’s a perfectly appropriate thing to have in a city seal.”
Ebarb emphasized that the working committee did explore the idea of using other architecture for the seal but ultimately decided city hall would best represent Newton’s citizens.
“So there’s a lot of really beautiful architecture in Newton, but we felt at the end of the day … that [city hall] would be more iconic and would also represent the totality of Newton,” Ebarb said.
Despite some councilors’ dissatisfaction with the new proposed seal, creating a different design for the seal would not only take more time but also require more money not currently available to the seal’s working group, according to Krintzman.
“There was actually a budget for design work,” Krintzman said. “The working group worked with the designer. They have expended that budget. There is no more budget.”
Gentile made a motion to recommit the seal to the Programs and Services Committee in order to stall the process and potentially lead to a proposal for more money in the seal’s budget. The motion failed 14–9 with one absence.
In another vote, the council approved the seal 13–10 with one absence.
“I do think that we created something really long-lasting that can work for the city for a very, very long time,” Ebarb said.
Leave a Reply