Floor plan for the Carson Mint. 1870 Census data sheet added.
RogerB
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Here is the original plan for the first floor of the Carson Nevada Mint. If there's interest, I can post the 2nd floor plan also. These predate modifications that extended the back of the building.
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Love this piece of history! Would like to see 2nd floor plan.
Second floor plan. Original version for Carson Mint.
Floor plans and related information of all the U.S. Assay Offices and Mints can be found in the book From Mine to Mint. (Warning - I wrote this book.)
Thank you for posting!
Pencil notations are the area of each room in square feet. (A small square with a diagonal line through it is a symbol for "square feet.")
Very cool, thanks for posting
Dare I ask? Where is the restroom?
Out back ----
@RogerB... Thanks for the images.. Two questions.. What are the rooms with a circle in the center and radial lines to the walls? What is the 'Whitening Room' for? Cheers, RickO
Stairs?
RE: "What are the rooms with a circle in the center and radial lines to the walls?"
This was the location of an elevator for moving coins/metal from one floor to another. These were little more than box-shaped lifts with counterweights. Compare to a contemporary "dumbwaiter."
RE: "Whitening room." This was where planchets were given a final cleaning after annealing. This removed any surface oxidation and "fire scale" leaving the planchets bright and ready for coining. In an older thread I posted a photo made at the New Orleans Mint showing stages of silver from bar to coin; whitened planchets are shown.
@RogerB .... Thank you... I figured that was likely for the whitening room, but had no idea of the answer to the other one. Cheers, RickO
Thank you for posting. Only ~5% of the entire mint was used for "coining"?
It looks like they had to carry gold and silver up and down the stairs bummer
https://www.pcgs.com/setregistry/quarters/washington-quarters-major-sets/washington-quarters-date-set-circulation-strikes-1932-present/publishedset/209923
https://www.pcgs.com/setregistry/quarters/washington-quarters-major-sets/washington-quarters-date-set-circulation-strikes-1932-present/album/209923
Looks like a “dumbwaiter” in the northeast corner.
I was just at the Carson Mint Museum a few weeks back and took a bunch of pics.
I haven’t had time to post them. Btw, maybe by now the dumb waiter finally got smart...
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Simple freight elevators run by belt and pully systems were present in all US Mints after 1855 except San Francisco which had to wait until the new building was complete. Hydraulic elevators came into use by 1880 at all Mints.
The circles and radial lines would indicate floor drain locations from my experience.
Thanks for posting these plans Roger.
Granted the layout is different today but I'm having fun orienting the building and fitting my images from a recent visit into the shape of the spaces.
"Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working" Pablo Picasso
Hope they had signs for his and her trees/bushes. LOL 🌳
Those are neat, thanks for sharing. Any idea why they had two different melting rooms?
The room at left of center was used for melting deposits before assay of the composite. Impurities were common and it was best to keep this away from the refined gold and silver, top center. Here's a small quote from the section in From Mine to Mint regarding deposit melting:
"Carson Mint – Deposit Melting
From the weighing room the crude bullion is sent to the deposit melting room, where it is melted and samples are taken for the assayer. This room is on the first floor at the middle of the south side of the main building, and was under the control of the deposit melter and his assistant acting for the superintendent.
Furnaces - There were three melting furnaces in the room, all of the same general type. Two of these have heavy cast iron shells, frames, and doors, and are lined with fire brick; they are 18 inches square (inside measurement), 16 inches deep in front, and 30 inches deep at the back, with level grates. The iron sliding doors at the top are sharply inclined, sloping downward from the back. The flue from each is 7 by 9 inches, and leads to the main stack.
The smaller furnace is similar in construction, but has a sheet iron shell. It is 13 inches square, 16 inches deep in front, and 27 inches deep in the rear and its 5 by 6 inch flue leads to a separate small chimney. The grate bars of each furnace are 1 inch wide, with spaces of five-eighths of an inch intervening.
Fuel ¬- If several melts are to be made in succession, a mixture of Lehigh anthracite and nut-pine charcoal are used. For a single melt the fire is made of charcoal only."
[Copyright Seneca Mill Press LLC]
Thanks. Good info.
This page from the 1870 Census will give members an idea of the economic impact of the Carson Mint on the local community. Also, notice that the only Nevada native is a child of 8 - on this page there are more residents born in Britain and Ireland than from any U.S. state.
This is cool stuff.
Thanks.
"Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working" Pablo Picasso
Interesting that they would list a Native that was not Indian and 8 years old. The state was not yet 6 years old (Oct 31, 1864). So, the child was born elsewhere it seems.
Must be many more pages, none of my relatives listed there.
bob
The census page was very informative, especially, the headers to each column. Thank you @RogerB.
AUandAG - Yes, there are several other pages available through Ancestry and other genealogical sites. I selected this page because it included so many Mint employees.
26 out of 40 persons on this page were associated with the Mint. The only non-white person was #40, William Lynch, the porter.