NYC Students Give Their 100 Million Cents

Have you seen the copper-toned glow emanating from Rockefeller Center? It's not The Tree...it's a penny harvest field! The installation is the first phase of Penny Harvest, and the copious coins came from students in NYC who have collected $1 million in change. The pennies will later go to different charities and towards improving the students communities.

New York first lady Silda Wall Spitzer joined hundreds of public school children on Monday to unveil a mass of $1 million in pennies collected for charity. The display, called the Penny Harvest Field, includes an estimated 100 million pennies -- plus a few nickels, dimes and quarters that slipped in by mistake.

The cents are sprawled across an area the size of one city block, contained in a 30' x 165' display that was designed by architect James Polshek. More photos are here (here's one of the pennies arriving), and you can see it in person through the end of the year...when hopefully all of the pennies will still be accounted for. This sort of reminds us of that time Kevin Federline tried to save the penny and Ocean Spray made a cranberry bog in Rock Center.

Photo via mihalis's flickr.

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By Jen Carlson in News on December 11, 2007 1:57 PM

Comments [rss]

BootyInMyEye

any chance anyone caught a glimpse or took a pic of the penny-lined street covered in ice?

Guest

The next time some bum asks me for spare change, I'm directing them to Rockefeller Center.

Såkandulæredet

They could melt down those pennies and get more money for the copper than the pennies are actually worth.

sonyactivision

We gave them a "penny for their thoughts". We want our money back.

Banana

am i allowed to go over and contribute? i freaking hate pennies

Snoopy

The other choice is to put them into penny wrappers but of course then several hundred trees would need to be cut down to make them.

Kojak

Fools. Don't they realize once they drop it into the Coinstar Machine it'll only come out to 95 Million cents?

streetchange

Cool! Way to go!

Reminds me of my own personal project:

http://streetchange.blogspot.com/

CR

In NYC the streets are literally paved in gold... er copper. That's why the terrorist all hate us, but they still want to come here anyway.

Snoopy

I heard someone threw in a rare mint indian head penny in the pot. The penny is suppose to be worth over $24,000. It's copper colored so it should be easy to find.

Snoopy

Just by using a quick glance of the photo I can see they are about 432 pennies short of their goal. Perhaps some rich benefactor can step up and fill that goal.