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20 Dollars Canal Bank
| Issuer | New Orleans Canal & Banking Company |
|---|---|
| Year | 1841-1895 |
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| Composition | Paper |
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| Obverse description | Black intaglio-engraved note on cream paper with an orange-tan underprint. The central upper vignette presents an allegorical group of three classical female figures seated together, flanked by a guilloche-framed numeral '20' at left incorporating two mermaids, and an oval medallion at right enclosing a standing female allegorical figure holding a staff. A small rectangular vignette at lower left depicts a steamship at sea, while a small still-life vignette of trade goods appears at lower centre, and the bold legend 'CANAL BANK' is set within a decorative cartouche below the main vignette. The promise-to-pay text in copperplate script, a bottom-right panel bearing 'TWENTY', and spaces for manuscript date, cashier, and president signatures complete the face. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | 20 CANAL BANK The New Orleans Canal & Banking Company will pay TWENTY DOLLARS to the bearer on demand. New Orleans __________ 18____ __________ Cash.ʳ __________ Pres.ᵗ |
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| Comments |
The New Orleans Canal & Banking Company was chartered in 1831 primarily to finance the New Basin Canal — a infrastructure project built largely by Irish immigrant labor under brutal conditions. The bank outlasted the canal's commercial usefulness by decades, continuing to issue notes well into the Reconstruction period despite the profound disruption the Civil War brought to Louisiana's entire chartered banking system.
Rawdon, Wright, Hatch & Edson was among the most technically accomplished bank note firms operating in antebellum America, later absorbed into the American Bank Note Company in 1858 — which neatly brackets the printer's dates given here.