District of Columbia Washington DC Flags

The flag of Washington, D.C. is not just another state flag, since D.C. is not a state, but it flies with the same pride across the district and around the country. FORTISVEX makes the District of Columbia flag here in the United States, in six outdoor nylon sizes from 2x3 Feet up to 8x12 Feet, and in heavier two-ply polyester at 3x5 and 4x6 Feet for sites with real wind. Every order over twenty five dollars ships free.

The Flag of Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C. went without an official flag for nearly one hundred fifty years. Congress created the District Flag Commission in 1938 to finally settle the question, and adopted the winning design, submitted by artist Charles A.R. Dunn, on October 15, 1938: three red five-pointed stars above two horizontal red bars on a white field. It was first flown eight days later, on October 23, 1938.

The design is an armorial banner drawn directly from the coat of arms of George Washington's family, documented in England as early as the fourteenth century and used privately by Washington himself at Mount Vernon. A common claim that the three stars represent the three branches of government is a myth. They are heraldic mullets, lifted from a five-hundred-year-old family crest, not a reference to the structure of government at all.

The design has aged well by any outside measure. The North American Vexillological Association's 2004 survey of nearly one hundred fifty city flags in the United States and Canada ranked the D.C. flag first, ahead of Chicago in second place, on the strength of its simplicity and the fact it reads correctly at any size, a quality most city flags lack.

The District of Columbia is not a state and has no statehood or admission date the way the fifty states do. Its founding instead traces to the Residence Act of July 16, 1790, which authorized a permanent federal capital on the Potomac River, and to the Organic Act of 1801, which formally placed the district under the exclusive control of Congress. Read more about the district's founding and its flag on our blog: July 16, 1790: How Washington, D.C. Was Founded.