Financial History Issue 121 (Spring 2017) | Page 31
CATHEDRALS of COINAGE
A History of the US Mint’s Locations
By Michael A. Martorelli
Throughout American history, the US
Mint has operated facilities in nine US cit-
ies, as well as in Manila, the capital of the
Philippines. Another was planned, but not
completed, in the state of Oregon. Six of
these specialty manufacturing facilities were
founded in response to gold or silver strikes
in their regions, and many of them have
become more iconic in their retirement
than when they were in full-scale operation.
Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries,
Great Britain did not supply its colonists
in British North America with enough
official coins to facilitate inter-colonial
commerce. The colonists, therefore, used
coins from Spain, Portugal, France and
other countries as mediums of exchange.
They also used nails, tobacco, Indian wam-
pum and the barter system to expedite the
purchase and sale of goods and services.
Following the American Revolution,
government officials recognized the need
for a standardized monetary system, and
in 1781 the Articles of Confederation gave
both Congress and the states the right to
produce coins. However, none of the multi-
ple varieties of coins struck by the federal or
state governments or their authorized con-
tractors achieved widespread circulation.
In 1789, the US Constitution gave Con-
gress the exclusive power to coin money,
but it still took several years of study and
deliberation before that body passed the
first of many Coinage Acts. The new mon-
etary system that law created was based
largely on Secretary of the Treasury Alex-
ander Hamilton’s January 1791 “Report on
the Establishment of a Mint.” The April
1792 Coinage Act was officially named “An
Act establishing a mint, and regulating the
Coins of the United States.” It designated
First US Mint building in Philadelphia,
circa 1850–1860.
the US dollar as the standard unit of
money, established the US Mint, autho-
rized the production of coins in denomina-
tions ranging from a half cent ($0.005) to
an eagle ($10) and detailed the standards
for the production of America’s coins.
Since Philadelphia was the nation’s
capital and its largest population center,
it made sense to locate the first US Mint
in that city. In July 1792, President George
Washington appointed former Pennsyl-
vania Treasurer David Rittenhouse as the
first director of the Mint. Later that month,
Rittenhouse purchased two properties on
Seventh Street and laid the cornerstone of
the first public building to be constructed
by the United States.
The first mint building was completed
in September 1792, and two others fol-
lowed in the next few months. The mint
began producing copper coins in 1793; it
added silver coins in 1794 and gold coins
in 1795. The growing population’s strong
demand for coins prompted the govern-
ment to construct a larger production
facility at the corner of Chestnut and
Juniper Streets in Philadelphia in 1833.
Initially, the new facility used the old
machinery brought over from the Seventh
Street buildings, but the equipment’s reli-
ance on human muscle power to strike
coins limited the new mint’s capacity.
Realizing the need for upgraded tech-
nology, the Mint’s fifth director, Samuel
Moore, hired the well-known machinery
expert Franklin Peale to study coin-mak-
ing techniques in Europe. Upon Peale’s
return from his two-year information
gathering trip, he supervised the instal-
lation of state-of-the-art steam powered
presses and milling machines. Thus, in
1836, the Philadelphia Mint became the
world’s most advanced coinage facility.
An article entitled “The First US Gold
Rush” in the Summer 2016 issue of Finan-
cial History describes the little-known
North Carolina gold rush, which began
in 1799. In the first two decades of the
19th century, various mines in that state
produced several thousand ounces of gold
and sent them to Philadelphia to be made
into coins. In 1828, gold was discovered in
the nearby state of Georgia. By 1832, mines
in that state were also sending Philadelphia
a large supply of gold destined for coinage.
To ease production bottlenecks and meet
the demand for coinage, President Andrew
Jackson signed The Mint Act of 1835, which
authorized the establishment of US Mint
branches in Charlotte, North Carolina;
Dahlonega, Georgia; and New Orleans,
Louisiana. All three of these branches had
rather limited lives. They were seized by the
Confederate government during the Civil
War, with officials continuing to produce
coins for a short time.
After the war, the US government decided
to close the Charlotte and Dahlonega facili-
ties. But in 1876, it gave the New Orleans
branch another chance at life by reopening
it as an assay office. In 1879, after refur-
bishing its minting equipment, officials
re-commissioned the facility as a producer
of silver coins. For the next 25 years, it was
the largest producer of the famous Morgan
silver dollar. In 1909, Treasury officials
decided the country no longer needed the
mint’s production capacity; they decom-
missioned it in 1911.
The discovery of gold in California
prompted the government to open another
branch of the US Mint in San Francisco in
1854. In its first year of operation, the San
Francisco Mint turned $4 million in gold
bullion into coins. Growing demand from
the western states prompted the govern-
ment to build a larger San Francisco facil-
ity in 1874. This unusual building featured
an enclosed central courtyard with a well.
Within several years, this mint was pro-
ducing more than 60% of the country’s
gold and silver coins; its vaults became
the repository for nearly one-third of the
nation’s gold reserves.
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