"**m& 



Figure 30. — The second U.S. Mint, Philadelphia. Designed by William 

 Strickland, this building was completed in 1833. From Gleason's Pictorial 

 Drawing Room Companion (July 17, 1 852 J , vol. 3. 



9. The United States Mints 



Early coins of the United States have been care- 

 fully described in numerous publications. How- 

 ever, when we ask how these coins were wrought 

 we find that little attention has been paid to such 

 questions. Modern textbooks of diesinking, for 

 example, leave a distinct impression that the art 

 was commenced yesterday, or perhaps this 

 morning, and that it came into being in perfect, 

 complete, and final form. Nor has the evolution 

 of the several processes of casting, rolling, anneal- 

 ing, blanking, edging, coining, and so forth yet 

 received much more attention from the technical 

 historian than from the textbook writer. 



The building in which the first mint was 

 established in Philadelphia in 1792 was still in 

 existence in the early 1920's. Its owner, Frank 



H. Stewart, tried to sell the property to the City 

 in order to preserve it, but there was no interest 

 shown by the City and it became another victim 

 of progress. Stewart did, however, inquire into 

 the history of the building, and his work, privately 

 printed, sets forth the record that he could piece 

 together. 85 



The present narrative presents by far the 

 clearest picture known to this editor of what 

 actually went on in that three-story brick building 



85 Frank H. Stewart, (cited in note 43 above) George 

 G. Evans, Illustrated History of tht United States Mint (Phila- 

 delphia, 1890). is a work concerned almost exclusively with 

 the coins produced. Patterson DuBois, Our Mint Engravet s 

 (Boston, 1883), is a slight work that was reprinted from American 



61 



