Moving to the Midwest

The American Numismatic Society (ANS), which has been headquartered in New York City since its founding in 1858, will be relocating to Toledo, Ohio, in 2028. The society has purchased an Art Deco building on the campus of the Toledo Museum of Art that will house its collection of over 800,000 items as well as a library, auditorium, and education center. The $20 million plan makes it possible for the ANS to finally open a money museum.

The society’s executive director, Ute Wartenberg Kagan, left the British Museum in 1998 to join the ANS and someday establish a money museum where she felt one belonged, in the city of Wall Street. Exorbitant costs and space constraints conspired against those plans, but Toledo clears all those roadblocks. Wartenberg Kagan said that she and several colleagues are eager to embark on the 560-mile trek west—about half of the 17-member staff will be making the move. The cost of living is much lower in Ohio, the campus has plenty of space, and it’s bound to see exponentially more visitors due to its central location.

Currently stationed on the 11th floor (leased for $1.8 million a year, including taxes) of a cramped Manhattan building, the society has been on the hunt for a new home for several years. 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, Massachusetts. Then, Adam M. Levine, the president and director of the Toledo Museum of Art who had spent the summer of 2009 at the ANS studying the iconography of Justinian II’s coinage, contacted Wartenberg Kagan and suggested she consider Toledo, where he just happened to know of a four-story building on campus that would soon become available. Wartenberg Kagan visited Toledo and came away convinced the new location was the right choice. 

Levine says the ANS “will be welcomed with open arms. And they’ll have more visitors in their first year than they’ve had in the last five.”

“Probably 10 years,” Wartenberg Kagan added.