DECEMBER 20
1958•Eisenhower Announces Lincoln Memorial Cent
2022•American Innovation $1
Eisenhower Announces the Lincoln Memorial Cent
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On December 20, 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower announced the selection of a new reverse for the Lincoln cent: Frank Gasparro's view of the Lincoln Memorial. The change ended the Wheat cent's 50-year run and prepared America's most familiar coin for the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth in 1959.
The redesign appeared modest. Victor David Brenner's portrait of Lincoln would remain on the obverse, while two wheat ears on the reverse would give way to the Lincoln Memorial. Yet the decision created one of the longest-lived and most widely recognized coin designs in American history.
From 1959 through 2008, hundreds of billions of Lincoln Memorial cents would be struck. They passed through virtually every American household, cash register, bank, vending environment, and coin jar for half a century. Hidden within Gasparro's architectural reverse was another remarkable detail: the seated statue of Lincoln inside the Memorial, making the cent one of the rare American coins to depict the same person twice.
The Lincoln Cent Was Approaching Its 50th Birthday
The Lincoln cent debuted in 1909 to commemorate the centennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth.
It was revolutionary for United States circulating coinage.
Before 1909, regular American coins generally used allegorical figures such as Liberty rather than portraits of actual historical Americans.
Lincoln changed that tradition.
Sculptor Victor David Brenner created the portrait of Lincoln that appeared on the new cent.
His dignified right-facing bust became one of the most familiar images ever placed on an American coin.
The portrait proved so successful that it survived every subsequent Lincoln cent reverse redesign.
Brenner's original reverse was simple.
Two stylized wheat ears framed the inscriptions “ONE CENT” and “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,” with “E PLURIBUS UNUM” above.
Collectors eventually gave the issue its familiar nickname: the Wheat cent or Wheat penny.
Fifty Years of Wheat Cents
From 1909 through 1958, the Wheat reverse accompanied Americans through enormous historical change.
It circulated during two world wars, the Great Depression, the New Deal, the Korean War, the beginning of the Cold War, and the early years of the space age.
Its metal composition even changed during World War II, when the 1943 cent was struck in zinc-coated steel to conserve copper.
As 1959 approached, the federal government prepared to commemorate the sesquicentennial—the 150th anniversary—of Lincoln's birth on February 12, 1809.
A coin redesign offered a way to place that commemoration into everyday circulation.
The Lincoln cent was the obvious vehicle.
There was little reason to replace Brenner's portrait.
By the late 1950s, it had become inseparable from the denomination itself.
The reverse offered the opportunity for change.
The Mint could preserve the familiar Lincoln portrait while adding imagery directly associated with his national memorial.
Frank Gasparro was Assistant Engraver of the United States Mint when he developed the new reverse.
Born in Philadelphia in 1909, Gasparro studied art and sculpture before joining the Mint's engraving staff.
He worked under Chief Engraver John R. Sinnock and later Gilroy Roberts.
Gasparro would eventually become Chief Engraver himself.
Gasparro's career ultimately touched several major American coins.
He designed the Lincoln Memorial cent reverse.
He created the reverse of the Kennedy half dollar.
Later, as Chief Engraver, he designed both sides of the Susan B. Anthony dollar.
Few twentieth-century American artists had their work reproduced on such an enormous scale.
The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., had been dedicated in 1922.
Designed by architect Henry Bacon, the classical structure houses Daniel Chester French's monumental seated statue of Abraham Lincoln.
By the 1950s, the Memorial had become one of the nation's most recognizable monuments.
Pairing Brenner's portrait with the Lincoln Memorial created a direct visual relationship.
The obverse showed the man.
The reverse showed the national monument built to preserve his memory.
It was both commemorative and appropriate for a coin intended to remain in ordinary circulation.
The Design Process Was Not a Public Competition
Unlike the 1921 Peace Dollar competition, the Lincoln Memorial reverse did not emerge from a broad public contest among famous sculptors.
The Mint developed the design internally.
Gasparro prepared models under a process that remained relatively quiet until the government was ready to announce the result.
On December 20, President Dwight D. Eisenhower announced the selection of Gasparro's Lincoln Memorial design for the reverse of the cent.
The timing placed the announcement just weeks before the beginning of Lincoln's sesquicentennial year.
The Wheat cent, after half a century, was officially on its way out.
Eisenhower's administration supported national observances of Lincoln's 150th birthday.
The coin redesign fit within that broader commemoration.
Unlike a medal or limited commemorative coin, however, the cent would reach essentially everyone.
Its audience was the entire nation.
Gasparro's design presents the Lincoln Memorial nearly straight on.
The building's columns dominate the center.
“UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” curves above.
“E PLURIBUS UNUM” appears between the country name and the Memorial.
“ONE CENT” occupies the lower portion.
At the center of the Memorial, between the columns, Gasparro included a minute representation of Daniel Chester French's seated Lincoln statue.
The detail is easy to overlook on a coin only 19 millimeters in diameter.
Yet it creates one of the most interesting visual facts in American coinage.
Brenner's Lincoln portrait appears on the obverse.
French's seated Lincoln, reduced to microscopic scale within Gasparro's Memorial, appears on the reverse.
Thus the same historical person is represented on both sides of the coin.
For generations of collectors, discovering the tiny second Lincoln became part of the fun of examining cents closely.
The initials “FG” appear near the lower right of the Memorial.
They identify Frank Gasparro as the reverse designer.
The placement is discreet but visible under magnification.
Gasparro's initials would appear on billions upon billions of cents.
The Last Wheat Cents
Coins dated 1958 were the final Lincoln cents with Brenner's wheat-ear reverse.
Collectors did not know that every 1958 cent would become the endpoint of a half-century type until the redesign became public.
Today 1958 cents form the natural boundary between the Wheat and Memorial series.
The new reverse entered production for coins dated 1959.
Millions quickly entered circulation.
For Americans accustomed to the Wheat reverse, the change was immediately obvious even though Lincoln's portrait remained familiar.
More than one billion Lincoln cents were produced in 1959 at Philadelphia and Denver combined.
The new design therefore spread across the country rapidly.
Unlike scarce commemorative issues, the Lincoln Memorial cent was genuinely mass-market national art.
The Denver Mint alone struck an enormous quantity of 1959-D cents.
They remain common today.
That abundance is historically important rather than disappointing: it demonstrates how completely the Memorial reverse entered American commerce from its first year.
For decades, stories have circulated about supposed 1959 cents struck with the old Wheat reverse.
Such claims attract enormous collector interest because a genuine transitional mule would be extraordinary.
But the regular 1959 production coin was the Memorial cent, and purported off-metal or wrong-reverse pieces require exceptional authentication and provenance.
When Gasparro's Memorial reverse debuted, the cent was still made primarily of copper.
The familiar bronze composition continued through most of the Memorial era.
That would eventually change dramatically as rising copper prices made the traditional composition increasingly expensive.
During the early Memorial period, the Mint removed tin from the cent's alloy, producing a copper-zinc composition often described as brass rather than traditional bronze.
The visual appearance remained similar.
Most Americans noticed the design far more than the subtle metallurgical change.
The Coin Shortage of the 1960s
The Memorial cent soon lived through another monetary upheaval.
A nationwide coin shortage developed during the 1960s.
The government temporarily removed mint marks from circulating coins dated 1965 through 1967 in an effort to discourage collecting and speculation.
Lincoln Memorial cents participated in that unusual period.
Beginning in 1968, cents bearing an “S” mint mark returned to circulation production.
San Francisco cents of the late 1960s and early 1970s added another collecting dimension to the Memorial series.
Proof cents were also produced there for collectors.
The Lincoln Memorial series developed its own famous varieties.
Doubled dies, repunched mint marks, unusual die states, and other errors gave specialists countless reasons to examine ordinary pocket change.
The design became a major entry point into coin collecting.
By the early 1980s, the value of copper made the traditional cent increasingly costly to produce.
In 1982, the Mint transitioned from a mostly copper cent to a copper-plated zinc composition.
The external appearance remained copper-colored, but the internal metal changed dramatically.
Gasparro's reverse therefore spans two major metallurgical eras.
An early Memorial cent is a substantial copper-based coin.
A later Memorial cent is primarily zinc with a thin copper coating.
The design visually united coins whose physical composition differed significantly.
The transition created multiple 1982 cent varieties involving composition, mint mark, and date size.
Collectors often use a scale to distinguish the heavier copper pieces from the lighter copper-plated zinc cents.
It is one of the easiest ways for beginners to learn that coins sharing the same date can have important physical differences.
Among the major rarities of the Memorial era is the 1969-S doubled-die obverse cent.
Strong doubling in the date and inscriptions makes genuine examples highly desirable.
Its existence helped cement the Lincoln cent's reputation as a denomination where extraordinary discoveries could still emerge from ordinary-looking coins.
The 1972 doubled-die obverse is another celebrated Memorial-cent variety.
Like the 1969-S, it encouraged generations of collectors to inspect dates and lettering carefully.
A common cent could suddenly become a significant numismatic find.
The 1983 Doubled-Die Reverse
Gasparro's reverse itself became the location of notable varieties.
The 1983 doubled-die reverse displays dramatic doubling in portions of the reverse lettering.
It is a reminder that even a design struck by the billions could produce collectible anomalies.
Later Memorial cents generated additional specialist varieties involving the spacing of letters in “AMERICA.”
The rare 1992 and 1992-D Close AM cents are famous examples.
Subtle die differences became valuable clues to how proof and circulation design hubs evolved.
Certain 1998, 1999, and 2000 Philadelphia cents with a Wide AM reverse also became popular varieties.
Again, tiny details on Gasparro's familiar design rewarded close examination.
The Memorial cent became a training ground for variety collectors.
The Memorial reverse remained on circulating cents from 1959 through 2008.
That matched the original Wheat reverse's 50-year span almost exactly.
Brenner's wheat ears served from 1909 through 1958.
Gasparro's Memorial served from 1959 through 2008.
The symmetry is remarkable.
For the Lincoln cent's first century, two reverse designs divided the period into nearly perfect halves.
The Wheat cent defined the first 50 years.
The Memorial cent defined the next 50.
The bicentennial of Lincoln's birth brought four new reverse designs in 2009.
Each represented a stage of Lincoln's life: birth and early childhood in Kentucky, formative years in Indiana, professional life in Illinois, and presidency in Washington.
Gasparro's Memorial reverse was retired after 2008.
Beginning in 2010, the Lincoln cent adopted a Union Shield reverse.
Lincoln's portrait remained on the obverse, continuing Brenner's century-old legacy.
The Memorial era had ended, but its coins remained everywhere.
Because Memorial cents were struck in staggering quantities, they did not disappear when production ended.
They still circulate alongside later cents.
Children beginning collections today can encounter examples spanning several decades in ordinary change.
A Coin Almost Every American Knows
Rarity is not the only measure of numismatic importance.
Some coins matter precisely because they were ubiquitous.
The Lincoln Memorial cent was handled by hundreds of millions of people over generations.
It became part of the visual texture of American daily life.
Few works of American sculpture have been reproduced as often as the Lincoln Memorial reverse.
Each cent was a miniature relief sculpture.
With hundreds of billions of impressions produced over five decades, Gasparro's design reached an audience almost impossible for a museum artist to match.
Representing a monumental building on a 19-millimeter coin presented a difficult artistic problem.
The Memorial contains columns, steps, rooflines, interior space, and a statue.
Gasparro had to reduce all of that into a relief shallow enough for high-speed coin production.
The result remained legible even after considerable circulation wear.
The reverse is almost recursive.
A coin commemorating Lincoln depicts a memorial commemorating Lincoln, and inside that memorial is a statue depicting Lincoln.
The design layers portraiture, architecture, sculpture, and national memory into a single cent.
On December 20, 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower announced Frank Gasparro's Lincoln Memorial design as the new reverse of the Lincoln cent.
The decision ended the Wheat cent's 50-year run and prepared the denomination for the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth.
Beginning in 1959, the new reverse spread through American commerce by the billions.
It survived coin shortages, composition changes, Mint production shifts, countless die varieties, and nearly half a century of economic and cultural change.
The tiny seated Lincoln visible between the Memorial's columns gave the coin an additional distinction: Lincoln appeared on both sides.
When the Memorial reverse was finally retired after 2008, it had completed a 50-year run of its own.
A design announced by Eisenhower on December 20, 1958 had become one of the most familiar pieces of American art ever created.
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