page_title: Lafayette dollar
section_title: Preparation
hierarchical_section_title: Lafayette dollar / Preparation
caption_attribution_description: English: Lafayette Medal (Bronze, 58 mm) (obv) (376-7291)
context_page_description: The Lafayette dollar was a silver coin issued as part of the United States' participation in the Paris World's Fair of 1900. Depicting Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette with George Washington, and designed by Chief Engraver Charles E. Barber, it was the only U.S. silver dollar commemorative prior to 1983, and the first U.S. coin to depict American citizens.
  Beginning in 1898, prominent Americans sought to erect in Paris a monument to Lafayette, a Frenchman who fought in the American Revolutionary War. Among these supporters was Chicago businessman Ferdinand Peck, whom President William McKinley chose as commissioner-general to the exposition. Peck made the monument proposal a part of the American plans for Paris, and appointed the Lafayette Memorial Commission to raise funds for it. A part of this fundraising was the one-dollar commemorative coin, approved by Congress on March 3, 1899.
  Conjoined busts of Washington and Lafayette appear on the obverse. Barber stated that the bases for his work were a sculpture of Washington by Jean-Antoine Houdon, and an 1824 medal of Lafayette by François-Augustin Caunois.
context_section_description: Once the bill passed, Bureau of the Mint Chief Engraver Charles E. Barber took personal charge of the project, seeking to avoid the delays and disputes that had marked the two previous commemoratives, the Columbian half dollar and the Isabella quarter. On March 24, 1899, Mint Director George E. Roberts wrote in a letter that the Lafayette Memorial Commission was contemplating having, on one side of the coin, a representation of the new monument. Barber responded the following day to Philadelphia Mint Superintendent Henry Boyer, referencing that letter and asking for a sketch of the monument.
  By April 12, 1899, the chief engraver had obtained from commission secretary Thompson a preliminary sketch of the monument—an equestrian statue by Paul Bartlett. Barber sketched other designs, including one with Lafayette's 1784 prayer for the prosperity of the United States. He also created one showing a standing figure of Lafayette, based on a statement by Thompson that they might omit the horse. Barber's concepts showing an equestrian statue for one side, and jugate heads of Lafayette and Washington for the other, would form the basis for the eventual coin. Roberts quickly approved Barber's sketch of the two heads, and without consulting the commission leaked the information to the American Journal of Numismatics, which printed it in its April 1899 issue.
  On May 23, 1899, Barber wrote to Roberts that he planned to base the Washington bust (on the obverse) on the well-known 1785 bust of the first president by Jean-Antoine Houdon, and upon an early medallic use of the Houdon bust, the 1786 "Washington Before Boston" medal by Pierre-Simon-Benjamin Duvivier. The Lafayette bust (also on the obverse) was to be based on an 1824 medal of Lafayette by François-Augustin Caunois.
  Peck and other commission members were not satisfied with the design proposals, and suggested some of their own. Barber denigrated these in a letter to Roberts on June 8. Peck had proposed that only the faces of Washington and Lafayette be shown, with no depiction of the rest of the head. Barber stated, "I am of the opinion that the heads of Washington and Lafayette should be treated from the sculptor's standpoint, and every effort be made to represent them with a grandeur and dignity commensurate with the position they fill in the Nation's history, which certainly could not be done if they are to be shown peeping out of a half moon."  At the instructions of Roberts, Barber went to New York and met with Peck over two days on June 14 and 15. Afterwards, Barber reported to the Mint Director, "I think we will hear no more of the Lafayette prayer" and that Peck now appreciated that the space available for a design, even on a silver dollar (the largest US coin) was limited, "and as it is the desire of the Committee [commission] to have the monument displayed, the prayer will have to find some other place". Although Barber indicated that the decision of the commission to represent the statue without its pedestal represented progress toward the point where he might engrave dies, "I learned in New York that the work of the sculptor must be submitted to a committee in Paris who will have entire charge of the monument, and the sculptor's work has to be changed in any and every detail until it meets the approval of this Committee of Frenchmen ... to me it looks as if it might be sometime in 1900."
  On June 20, 1899, Barber submitted the final designs for the coin. They were approved by Director Roberts on July 1. This did not put an end to the wrangles over what should be on the coin: the commission wished to have the coins dated 1900, but have them to sell as early as possible in 1899. Secretary of the Treasury Lyman Gage insisted on the provision of the Coinage Act of 1873 that required the date of production to appear on the coins. In the end, the matter was compromised: the pieces were struck in December 1899, not distributed until the following month, and the inscription "Paris 1900" appears on the coins.
caption: Caunois's medal of Lafayette
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