The fourth Philadelphia Mint building opened on August 14, 1969. It’s one of the largest and most productive mints in the world.
The opening of this massive, three-acre facility on Independence Mall on August 14th was a critical, high-tech milestone designed to resolve a severe, nationwide coin shortage that had crippled American retail commerce during the mid-1960s. Moving away from the slow, traditional casting methods of older installations, this state-of-the-art facility introduced massive, multi-ton automated rolling mills and continuous casting furnaces that could stamp out over 10,000 coins every single minute. By masking its immense industrial power behind an elegant, low-profile granite exterior that respected the historic architecture of nearby Independence Hall, the fourth mint successfully secured the stability of the nation’s physical money supply, turning out billions of quarters, dimes, and pennies to fuel the growth of the modern American economy.
