Fact Friday 455 - How an Old U.S. Mint Became North Carolina's First Art Museum

Photo: Mint Museum Randolph by Expedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Happy Friday!

Ninety years ago yesterday, on October 22, 1936, the Mint Museum opened its doors with an inaugural gala. It was North Carolina's first art museum, and the building it opened in already had a story of its own.

That building started out on West Trade Street as a branch of the United States Mint. Designed by architect William Strickland, it opened on July 27, 1837, and coined about $5 million in gold before the Civil War brought minting to an end.

By the early 1930s, a planned post office expansion next door put the old Mint in danger, and demolition was already underway. In February 1933, at a luncheon hosted by Mary Myers Dwelle, a speech urging the building's rescue moved the guests to start giving on the spot. The money was raised in two days and paid to the demolition contractor, so the building could be taken apart and rebuilt somewhere else.

A developer donated land on Randolph Road in what's now Eastover, and Dwelle wrote letter after letter, from Raleigh to Washington, D.C., looking for money to finish the job. Three years later, the old Mint was reborn as a museum. Its portrait of Queen Charlotte, a fitting piece for the city's first art museum, was a gift from Jane Hall Liddell Battle.

Photo: Mint Museum Uptown by Bz3rk, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Today there are two Mints. Mint Museum Randolph still sits in Eastover, and Mint Museum Uptown opened on October 1, 2010, at the Levine Center for the Arts in Uptown, in a building designed by Boston firm Machado and Silvetti. Along the way, the museum built one of the largest collections in the Southeast, including thousands of pieces of decorative arts and historic costume.

For more on the old Mint building, see Fact Friday 83: The 'Mint' In Charlotte's Oldest Art Museum. Then go wish the Mint a happy 90th, and wear a City of Charlotte Crown Tee while you're there.

More Fact Friday: The 'Mint' in Charlotte's Oldest Art Museum, The U.S. Mint Building and the Jonas Federal Building and Charlotte Gold and Innovation.

Sources: The Mint Museum: About; The Mint Museum: The Mint Museum's history is women's history; Wikipedia: Mint Museum (citing the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission)