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New Orleans Mint

Architect
William Strickland
Style
Greek Revival
City
New Orleans, LA
Collections
the french quartergreek revival crescent city
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The New Orleans Mint operated as a branch of the United States Mint from 1838 to 1861 and again from 1879 to 1909, striking over 427 million gold and silver coins worth more than $307 million. Designed by William Strickland, a leading American Greek Revival architect, it is the only U.S. mint to have produced both Union and Confederate currency and the oldest surviving structure ever used as a U.S. mint. The building is a National Historic Landmark.

the building

Coining both sides of a war. Coin production stopped during most of the Civil War and Reconstruction, but before and after that gap the mint struck currency for both the United States and, briefly, the Confederacy — a distinction unique among former U.S. mint buildings.

From assay office to fallout shelter. After minting ended, the building cycled through second lives as an assay office, a U.S. Coast Guard storage facility, and a fallout shelter before becoming a branch of the Louisiana State Museum in 1981.

Katrina and reopening. Hurricane Katrina damaged the building in 2005; more than two years of repairs and renovation followed, and the museum reopened in October 2007.

Jazz museum inside a mint. The Mint now houses exhibits of the New Orleans Jazz Museum, including instruments used by notable New Orleans jazz musicians alongside photographs and posters — one of only two former U.S. mint buildings, along with the Charlotte Mint, to hold an art gallery.

the style

Strickland worked in the Greek Revival idiom that defined many federal buildings of the era, and the New Orleans Mint stands as a notable exemplar of that style from one of its leading American practitioners.

More on Greek Revival

the architect

William Strickland was a leading American architect of the Greek Revival style; the New Orleans Mint is counted among the notable buildings demonstrating that style in his body of work.

significance

The New Orleans Mint is a National Historic Landmark and the oldest extant structure to have served as a U.S. Mint. It is also the only U.S. mint to have produced both Union and Confederate coinage.

nearby

All 38 buildings in New Orleans