FEDERAL RESERVE TO OPEN DENVER MONEY MUSEUM

The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City says it will open a "Money Museum" and conference center at its Denver Branch next month.

The new features are part of extensive renovation to the first floor of the Denver Branch, at 1020 16th St. in downtown Denver.

The 7,000-square-foot Money Museum "will offer visitors a unique look at the nation's central bank in action," the Fed said in a statement. "Visitors can learn more about the Federal Reserve through interactive exhibits that explore an efficient payment system, a safe and sound banking system, and how monetary policy provides for a stable economy."

The museum will offer samples of historical currency, an exhibit on detecting counterfeit notes, and "seeing $30 million dollars up close."

The museum is slated to open in January and will operate 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. weekdays except bank holidays. When the museum opens, a website (www.kansascityfed.org/moneymuseum) will offer more information.

"The Denver Branch's location in the heart of downtown, right on the 16th Street pedestrian mall, makes this a perfect spot to have a Money Museum and conference center," Mark Horan, the Fed's vice president of district facilities functions, said in the statement. "Plus with the U.S. Mint only a few blocks away, we anticipate a high volume of visitors."

The Denver Branch's public entrance is on Curtis Street. Photo IDs will be required for visitors 18 or older.

Civic, social and educational groups can make advance reservations and request guided tours and presentations via the website once it is active.

Kansas City is headquarters of the Fed's 10th District, which includes Colorado. The Denver Branch is one of the district's regional branches.

To read the complete article, see: Fed's Denver Branch to open Money Museum (www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/2010/12/02/
feds-denver-branch-to-open-money-museum.html)

"This will be something to complement what the Mint has," said Stacee Montague, spokeswoman for the Federal Reserve. "It will bring a little bit of excitement to the 16th Street Mall."

No firm plans are in place for how the grassy area surrounding the building will be made more enticing to pedestrians, but ideas being considered are displaying the large casks in which money is delivered to the bank or the old safe that has been with the Fed since it came to Denver in 1918.

Among displays being built for the museum is a case — about 6 feet tall and 8 feet wide — that will be stacked to the top with $30 million in $100 bills.

"You will be able to walk up to the case and say, 'So close, yet so far away,' " Montague said.

Visitors to the museum leave with a souvenir of $165 in money that has been shredded because it has become unfit for circulation.

"We shred a lot of money a day," Montague said. "We either give it away or turn it into compost."

The museum won't be the first to be housed in a Federal Reserve bank. Kansas City, Cleveland and San Francisco are among the branches that have money museums.

To read the complete article, see: Money Museum should be worth a look (www.denverpost.com/business/ci_16773860)

The Harry S. Truman Library of Independence, Mo., has generously loaned a large number of coins from its 463-piece coin collection for display in the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's Money Museum. The Truman Library collection of American coinage consists of examples of coins produced by the U.S. Mint during every presidential administration.

The Truman Coin Collection was created through a nationwide campaign to replace a similar collection belonging to Secretary of the Treasury John Snyder that was stolen in 1962. Joseph Stack, a New York coin dealer, took the lead by volunteering to catalog and arrange the coins that were donated to the Coin Restoration Program. Coins were received from 167 individual donors and coin clubs located across the country. On May 6, 1964, John Snyder and Joseph Stack presented the restored collection to the Truman Library.

To visit the money museum web site, see: www.kansascityfed.org/moneymuseum

Wayne Homren, Editor

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