This Gold Coin Built the Smithsonian

[ret5hd]

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-object-at-hand-3-114828409/

An interesting read, but in light of current events, one part in particular stood out to me. It made me remember that we as a country have been through similar times before, but we managed to come through alright:

When Andrew Jackson became President in 1829, he inspired a rush to the nation's capital of tobacco-chewing, gallus-snapping rustics from the southern and western frontiers. Book learning was not high on their list of national priorities, and they figured the gift might be a sign that the Brits were patronizing us.

[roamer65]

1. It worked both ways.

Later on, many of our $20 gold pieces were melted by Britain for sovereigns. Common practice in those days.

Great article, thank you!

[BumRushDaShow]

2. Thank you for that!

Fascinating history of the institution and it got me researching that era's iteration of the mint here.

The location of where those "new" American coins were minted from those "Smithson sovereigns" here in Philly (2nd U.S. Mint) -



The above building, near City Hall, is no longer there. Ironically what IS currently on the site, is the Widener Building (there is a historic marker at the location) -

Circa 1914


Today


named for Peter A.B. Widener (a Drumpf precursor - although unlike Drumpf, he did donate to organizations "for real" ), who was at one time the richest man in Philly (dabbling in a number of industries including public transit, real estate, oil), who was described as follows -

Second, the area’s main developer was streetcar magnate Peter Arrell Brown Widener, a brilliant, self-made former butcher who was the kingpin of Philadelphia’s nineteenth century industrial and real estate boom. Widener’s massive Germanic mansion at 1200 North Broad—at the center of his city land holdings–was as much a real estate advertisement as a monument to his own taste.

For aggressive, driven men like Widener, the “Workshop of the World” offered endless ways to make a fortune. The city was a Victorian Silicon Valley, a laboratory for entrepreneurship and technology. Widener himself diversified his holdings into shipping, manufacturing, gas lines, and real estate. By 1900, he was the richest man in Philadelphia, worth over $100 million. Many of those who bought homes near the Widener mansion were also poor boys who had struck it rich—such as the swashbuckling promoter William Warren Gibbs, a one-time business partner of Widener’s who lived at 1216 North Broad. Gibbs was said to sit on more boards of directors than any other man in America. The area was also popular with German Jews who, despite their wealth and culture, were shunned by the Philadelphia establishment. The social discrimination against Jew and gentile denizens of North Broad Street ran deep and lasted long after their descendants had decamped to the suburbs. As one social chronicler observed, it took “families such as the Wideners several generations and removals to live down the fact that they had not merely had a house but a mansion on North Broad Street. The bigger the house, the more flagrant the offense.”

https://www.phillyhistory.org/blog/index.php/2010/06/the-lost-world-of-north-broad-street/

The site of Widener's mansion mentioned in the above excerpt is now the location of a KFC.