On Tuesday, March 5, 2019, Harvey G. Stack, Co-Founder of Stack’s Bowers Galleries, received the Honorary Life Fellow Award from the American Numismatic Society (ANS) for 50 years of dedicated service, gifts and support for the Society. It is one of the foremost honors an American numismatist can receive.
Approached for comment, Harvey Stack gave the following history of his involvement with the ANS —CoinWeek:
I first visited the Society, when it was located in upper Manhattan in the same courtyard as the Hispanic American Society, with my father Morton, who was active in the organization and attended many lectures and learned from the many numismatic scholars who visited there to examine and study coins. Some of the most famous collectors and authors gathered at the Society, usually monthly, on Saturday afternoons. It was always a great place to meet and learn from them.
Even though I was but 10 years old at the time, I was always welcomed.
After the Second World War, the holdings of the Society grew from the many gifts they received. Their library expanded, and when Donald Partrick was president they decided to move. First to an old bank building in lower New York, and then to their present location on Varick Street, on the lower Westside of Manhattan. Since Stack’s had developed a close relationship to John Whitney Walters, a designer and construction engineer, we helped to get him to oversee the project.
I learned Numismatics from the best: my father Morton and my Uncle Joseph. They embraced the American Numismatic Society as a place that should be visited if one wanted to advance their numismatic knowledge. Through the years the Stack Family donated coins, reference books, and funds to enhance what we felt needed to be nurtured to become better numismatists. I still attend when I can, the lectures, and also the Annual Ball for the membership.
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About the ANS
The American Numismatic Society (ANS), organized in 1858 and incorporated in 1865 in New York State, operates as a research museum under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code and is recognized as a publicly supported organization under section 170(b)(1)(A)(vi) as confirmed on November 1, 1970.
The ANS maintains one of the most important and complete collections of the world, from the Ancient times to the modern era, has published many manuscripts, books, and reference material and has provided educational seminars to develop the study of numismatics. Their collections are considered one of the finest ever assembled in a numismatic museum and they have been heralded for decades for their outstanding work on behalf of the continued growth of numismatics, worldwide.
