Max Hensley writes:

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
NOTES FROM E-SYLUM READERS: JUNE 30, 2019 : Mr. 880's House Today(https://www.coinbooks.org/v22/esylum_v22n26a16.html)

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
NUMISMATIC WALKING TOUR OF LOWER MANHATTAN(https://www.coinbooks.org/v21/esylum_v21n22a30.html)

Peter writes:

This walking tour is meant primarily to highlight the art and architecture of lower Manhattan of the period between roughly 1900 and 1930, whenartists and architects frequently worked in close association with one another as never before, and the connections between many of these artists andcontemporary numismatic art. At the same time, we will also consider the history of New York City more broadly.

Much of what we will be looking at was created when the City Beautiful movement had captured the imagination of architects, artists, politicians,and other elites. The City Beautiful movement was a Progressive reform movement in North American architecture and urban planning that flourished inthe 1890s and early 1900s with the intent of using beautification and monumental grandeur in cities to counteract the perceived moral decay ofpoverty-stricken urban environments. The movement did not seek beauty for its own sake, but rather as a social control device for creating moral andcivic virtue among urban populations. Advocates of the movement believed that such beautification could thus provide a harmonious social order thatwould improve the lives of the inner-city poor.

Many of the same artists who were involved in the City Beautiful movement in New York City, producing both architectural and free standingsculpture, were also involved in President Theodore Roosevelt's attempt to beautify US coinage. Roosevelt worked closely with Augustus Saint-Gaudens,one of the most preeminent sculptors in the US, to produce a new set of gold coins introduced in 1907, the year Saint-Gaudens died. Soon thereafterseveral of Saint-Gaudens' former students and apprentices were approached to produce other coins as well, while they continued to work on largersculptural projects in New York City. These artists include James Fraser, Herman McNeil, and Adolph Alexander Weinman. At the same time, otherartists, like Daniel Chester French, Frederick Macmonies and Paul Manship, were heavily involved in the production of medallic art for the Circle ofFriends of the Medallion and the Society of Medallists, as well as for various private commissions. Thus for a time, at the beginning of the 20thcentury, there was, in New York City, an amazing confluence of numismatic, architectural and public artistic endeavors such as had not been seenbefore or ever since.