[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 200 (Monday, December 1, 2025)]
[House]
[Pages H4956-H4957]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
PRICELESS COIN COLLECTION HEADS TO THE TOLEDO MUSEUM OF ART
(Ms. KAPTUR asked and was given permission to address the House for 1
minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to share a story of renewal, of
history and heritage rediscovered, and of deep respect for heritage in
the American heartland.
For 167 years, one of the world's greatest collections of coins--
doubloons, silver dollars, and denari--that tell the story of
civilization and economic progress itself sat largely unseen in vaults
in Manhattan, New York. These coins crossed oceans, witnessed empires
rise and fall, and marked the turning points of human history, and they
rested largely unseen.
In New York, this priceless collection had few visitors, little
space, and no real home, but now these treasures are coming to
northwest Ohio to the world-class Toledo Museum of Art.
The American Numismatic Society has chosen Toledo, located on
beautiful Lake Erie, as the place where its future can flourish. We are
so grateful that the society saw what we know so well: a community that
opens its doors wide to history and also a world-class museum that
inspires.
Mr. Speaker, children will be able to learn about heritage in this
great location. I will thank and congratulate Adam Levine, the director
of the museum, and the inspired board of the Toledo Museum of Art. We
give Mr. Levine a salute and congratulate him.
Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a New York Times article titled
``After 167 Years in New York, a Priceless Coin Collection Heads to
Toledo.''
[From The New York Times, Nov. 20, 2025]
After 167 Years in New York, a Priceless Coin Collection Heads to
Toledo
(By Dan Barry)
On the 11th floor of a downtown Manhattan building, just
around the corner from the Holland Tunnel, sits one of the
world's finest collections of coins. Stored behind a series
of locked doors in a massive, climate-controlled vault, the
coins tell the story of civilization, from antiquity to
today.
A Sumerian clay tablet from about 2000 B.C.E. Early Chinese
forms of money shaped like miniature tools. A silver French
penny from the age of Charlemagne. A medal given by the
Lincoln administration to a Native American chief, pierced by
a bullet. More than 800,000 other telltale coins, medals and
objects of wonder.
But apart from scholars, members and the occasional
enthusiast, almost no one sees this treasure, which is one
reason its guardian, the American Numismatic Society, is
[[Page H4957]]
leaving the city where it was founded in the mid-19th
century--and moving to Toledo, Ohio.
The society announced today that it will be making a
``strategic'' relocation to an Art Deco building on the
spacious campus of the Toledo Museum of Art. The $20 million
plan, to be completed in 2028, would make possible its long-
harbored vision of a state-of-the-art money museum, a dream
that has proved elusive in New York.
``One of our members said that this will mean a terrible
loss to New York City,'' the society's executive director,
Ute Wartenberg Kagan, said. ``But if no one uses it, what's
the loss?''
Wartenberg Kagan, a scholar of ancient Greek coinage, left
the British Museum in 1998 to join the American Numismatic
Society and someday establish a proper money museum where one
belonged, in the city of Wall Street. But exorbitant costs
and space constraints conspired against those plans, as did
an apparent indifference to the charms of numismatics.
So: Hello, Toledo!
Wartenberg Kagan said that she and several other colleagues
are eager to make the 560-mile move west, where the society
has already bought the building that will house its
collection as well as a library, auditorium and education
center. The population of the Toledo metropolitan area is
about 650,000, less than one-tenth that of New York City, but
there are many buts.
The cost of living is lower. The campus has plenty of space
to accommodate the school buses that never pulled up to the
current location because there was nowhere to park. And there
is the opportunity to work in concert with the museum,
integrating collections to produce dynamic exhibits for an
engaged community.
``We're not just buying real estate,'' Wartenberg Kagan
said. ``We're buying a relationship.''
But as one relationship begins, another ends. The American
Numismatic Society traces its origins to 1858, when a teenage
boy named Augustus B. Sage invited other coin obsessives to
his family's Manhattan home to discuss the creation of a
society dedicated to all matters numismatic. Sage, who would
go on to serve in the Civil War and die young, of pneumonia,
donated the first object: an 1825 American half-cent.
In 1908, the society built a neoclassical building at 155th
Street and Broadway, in the city's Washington Heights
section, to accommodate its growing membership, library and
collection. The numismatic cognoscenti gathered there for
lectures and exhibits, for celebrations of National Coin Week
and debates about the aesthetics of the buffalo nickel.
But as the years passed, fewer people traveled to Upper
Manhattan to see and discuss coins. Mentions of the society
sometimes appeared in newspaper roundups of out-of-the-way
places to visit in Manhattan.
Excitement occasionally paid a call. In 1977, four armed
men overpowered two society guards, meticulously taped cloth
over display cases to muffle the sound of glass being broken
and made off with about 300 rare coins worth as much as
$100,000. As they calmly exited the building, the thieves
told three impatient visitors at the door that the place was
closed.
And in 1989, a heart surgeon and coin collector from
California arrived in New York to be honored by the society
for his beneficence, only to be arrested--and later
convicted--instead. During his occasional visits, the good
doctor had been pocketing rarities worth about $1 million: a
gold coin of the Roman Emperor Hadrian here, six gold coins
of the Visigoths there.
Facing a yawning deficit, the society sold its Washington
Heights building and moved to the Wall Street area in 2004,
with plans to open a money museum. But the plan never came to
fruition.
In 2008 the society moved again, to leased space on the
llth floor of an old building at 75 Varick Street. Over eight
hours one late-spring Saturday, its entire collection,
cocooned in bubble wrap and packed in more than 400 plastic
crates, was transported to the new location as quietly as can
be done with a police escort.
Both the appeals and challenges of the society's current
home were evident during a recent tour. An extensive library
all but begged the visitor to pause and flip through a book,
any book: on heraldry or mythology, shipwrecks or excavation.
Then, once past the several locked doors that guard the
vault, Wartenberg Kagan and Peter van Alfen, the chief
curator, shared with glee just the smallest hint of the
society's immense treasure.
In this sliding drawer, a silver coin from the reign of
Alexander the Great, one of many, portraying him in battle in
India. And in this drawer, the famous silver denarius, minted
to commemorate the murder of Julius Caesar and depicting two
daggers and the bust of his assassin, Brutus. Here, a 1787
doubloon made by a New York City goldsmith, and here, a rare
1861 Confederate half dollar, struck in New Orleans.
A year could be lost in the vault of the American
Numismatic Society.
But the society's leased space is too expensive ($1.8
million a year, including taxes), too small to accommodate
its ever-growing holdings and not conducive to public
engagement. A few years ago, a travel guide included the
society among its list of free attractions--open by
appointment and closed on weekends--in Lower Manhattan. Even
then, only a half-dozen or so tourists might wander in every
week.
``This is both a big and a small place,'' Wartenberg Kagan
said. ``That's one of its problems.''
For the last several years, the society--which has 1,400
members, including 265 outside the United States--has
searched for more suitable quarters. Plans to move to the
University of Chicago fell apart, as did those to move to the
University of Pennsylvania, Long Island City in Queens and a
warehouse in Fall River, Mass.
Then came a bit of numismatic serendipity. It just so
happened that Adam M. Levine, the president and director of
the Toledo Museum of Art, had spent the summer of 2009 at the
American Numismatics Society, studying the iconography of
Justinian II coinage. He contacted Wartenberg Kagan, whom he
knew, and suggested that she consider Toledo, where he just
happened to know of a four-story building on the museum's 37-
acre campus that would soon become available.
Levine, who grew up in the Riverdale section of the Bronx,
expressed great affection for his native city. But he is now
imbued with what he called the ``zeal of the convert,'' and
he vouched for Toledo's cultural amenities, community spirit
and easy, relatively short ride to the Detroit Metropolitan
Wayne County Airport.
``I feel very confident that there is life after New
York,'' Levine said. ``And Toledo is made special by being
the only place where you can pretty much guarantee that
you'll like the next person you meet.''
A dubious Wartenberg Kagan visited Toledo--and came away
persuaded. It checked every box for the society's trustees,
including a supportive, good-sized city, reasonable housing
costs and proximity to major research facilities.
Other staff members also made the trip to Toledo and liked
what they saw. About half of the 17-member staff will be
making the move, including Wartenberg Kagan and van Alfen.
``They will be welcomed with open arms,'' Levine predicted.
``And they'll have more visitors in their first year than
they've had in the last five.''
``Probably 10 years,'' Wartenberg Kagan added.
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