If you plan to be in the New York City area during the holiday season I highly encourage you to head over to Rockefeller Center, not so you can snap a photo of the famous Christmas tree (though it is spectacular and worth taking a few pictures of), but to catch sight of an impressive exhibit that will leave you speechless.
Part of Rockefeller Center is paved with gold–golden pennies that is. And not just a few jars worth, we’re talking 100 million pennies (plus a few nickels, dimes and quarters that slipped in by mistake) spread out along an entire city block.
The 30 feet by 165 feet exhibit is the work of dedicated public school children from around the nation. Hundreds of thousands of students from more than 800 schools spent the weeks between October 22nd and Thanksgiving going door-to-door collecting pennies for the non-profit organization Common Cents. The group’s 17th annual Penny Harvest yielded the massive exhibit, which is estimated at $1 million.
The display, dubbed Penny Harvest Field, has been roped off so visitors can walk the length of it and see what one hundred million pennies really looks like. The pennies will be on display until the end of the year so you have a couple of more weeks to stroll over to penny lane.
It might not be a bad place to go as a family. Not only will you be able to capture some incredible group photos (think about what the pennies look like from the Top of the Rock), but also you’ll have the opportunity to teach your kids about the importance of charity and Common Cents. The group’s Penny Harvest is a national educational program designed to teach children about their value as contributors to society. Once the exhibit is dismantled the money will be given back to the respective schools and will be donated to organizations of the students’ choice for causes such as protecting the environment and helping the elderly.
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