Ever pulled a crumpled single out of your pocket and actually looked at it? Most people haven't. Not really. We use it to buy a candy bar or tip a valet, but the "one" is basically the wallpaper of the American economy. It's everywhere. It’s also a total design nightmare that somehow became a masterpiece. If you're looking for one single name to answer who designed the 1 dollar bill, you’re going to be disappointed. There wasn’t some lone genius sitting in a dimly lit room with a quill pen.
Instead, the bill we carry today is a Frankenstein’s monster of committee decisions, Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) staff work, and a weirdly intense obsession with the 1930s.
The 1935 Overhaul: When the Dollar Got Its Look
The 1 dollar bill hasn't always looked like this. Before 1935, American currency was physically larger—referred to by collectors as "horse blankets." But in the mid-30s, the Treasury Department decided to standardize. They wanted something that felt more "American" and, frankly, more permanent.
The primary credit for the overall aesthetic usually goes to Edward M. Weeks. He was the supervisor of the BEP’s engraving division. Think of him as the creative director. He didn’t draw every line, but he steered the ship. He was the guy who decided where the borders went and how the text should curve. But even Weeks was working within a massive bureaucracy.
Underneath Weeks, you had specialists. In the world of high-security engraving, nobody does everything. You have "portrait guys" and "lettering guys." It’s a highly siloed craft. For the portrait of George Washington, they didn't just wing it. They went back to a classic: the 1796 Unfinished Portrait by Gilbert Stuart.
The guy who actually cut the steel plate for Washington's face? That was George Smillie. He was a master engraver, and his interpretation of Stuart’s painting is what you see every time you look at a single. If you look closely at the lines on Washington's cheek, those are Smillie's marks. It’s essentially a 19th-century engraving of an 18th-century painting, slapped onto a 20th-century bill.
That Weird Pyramid and the Secretary of Agriculture
This is where it gets truly strange. If you flip the bill over, you see the Great Seal of the United States. You know the one—the floating eyeball and the eagle. Most people assume the Treasury just put it there because it looked official.
Nope.
🔗 Read more: Is 4 Celsius Cold? What 4 Celsius in Fahrenheit Actually Feels Like
We actually have Henry Wallace to thank for that. At the time, he was the Secretary of Agriculture (and later FDR’s Vice President). Wallace was a bit of a mystic. He was obsessed with the symbolism of the Great Seal, which had been around since 1782 but was rarely used on money. Wallace brought the idea to Henry Morgenthau Jr., the Secretary of the Treasury.
Wallace famously wrote about how he was struck by the Latin phrase "Novus Ordo Seclorum" (New Order of the Ages). He thought it fit the New Deal era perfectly. He convinced Morgenthau, who then convinced President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
FDR, a Freemason himself, loved the idea. He actually made a specific design tweak. Originally, the eagle was going to be on the left and the pyramid on the right. FDR flipped them. He wanted the "face" of the seal—the eagle—on the right side because it felt more natural. So, when you ask who designed the 1 dollar bill, you’ve got to include a President and a Secretary of Agriculture in the mix. They were the ones playing with the layout like it was a school project.
The Men Behind the Tools
While the politicians played with the symbols, the BEP staff did the heavy lifting.
- Joachim C. Benzing: He handled the intricate "lathe work"—those dizzying geometric patterns in the corners.
- Augustus Lukeman: While primarily a sculptor, his influence on the era's neoclassical style is felt in the bill's proportions.
- Charles Brooks: He was the lettering expert. Every "The United States of America" you see was essentially his calligraphy translated into steel.
Why Does It Look So "Old"?
The design has barely changed since 1963. While the $20, $50, and $100 bills have all gotten high-tech makeovers with color-shifting ink and 3D security ribbons, the $1 stays the same.
Why?
Vending machines. Honestly. That’s a huge part of it. The cost of upgrading every vending machine and bill validator in the world to recognize a "new" dollar bill is astronomical. But there's also a legal shield. Section 116 of the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act actually prohibits the Treasury from spending money to redesign the $1 bill.
The law is basically a wall. It protects the $1 from the "Monopoly money" look of modern currency. It’s the most "conservative" piece of design in your wallet. It’s a time capsule.
The Symbolism Rabbit Hole
Let's talk about the eagle. The design of the eagle on the back was handled by the BEP's design team, but it follows the strict heraldic rules laid out by the Founding Fathers. Charles Thomson, the Secretary of the Continental Congress, was the one who originally came up with the "bundle of arrows" and "olive branch" concept in the 1780s.
On the bill, the eagle is holding 13 arrows and an olive branch with 13 leaves. There are 13 stars above its head. There are 13 stripes on the shield. There are 13 steps on the pyramid.
Is it a conspiracy?
No. It’s just 13 colonies. The designers in 1935 were leaning hard into the "13" motif because it’s the DNA of the country’s founding. But because the pyramid looks a bit "Illuminati-ish," the design has fueled a thousand late-night internet threads. In reality, the pyramid represents strength and duration. It’s unfinished because the country is still a work in progress. It’s actually pretty poetic if you stop thinking about secret societies for a second.
🔗 Read more: Heat Setting Perhaps NYT: Why Your New Clothes Keep Shrinking or Losing Their Shape
The Secret "Spider" and Other Myths
If you look at the top right corner of a $1 bill, in the decorative border surrounding the "1," some people swear they see a tiny owl. Others see a spider.
People love to credit some rogue designer with hiding a secret message here. "It’s a Mason symbol!" or "It’s a mark of the Bohemian Grove!"
Truth? It’s just an artifact of the engraving process. When you’re dealing with fine lines on a steel plate, sometimes the intersections create shapes that the human brain tries to make sense of (it's called pareidolia). There is no record in the BEP archives of a "secret owl." It’s just a bit of webbed scrollwork that happens to look like a bird if you squint hard enough.
How to Read Your Dollar Bill Like an Expert
If you want to impress someone at a bar, don't just tell them who designed the 1 dollar bill. Show them how to read the "hidden" data on it. The bill is a map of the Federal Reserve system.
- The Serial Numbers: The first letter of the serial number tells you which Federal Reserve Bank issued the bill. A=Boston, B=New York, and so on.
- The Plate Numbers: Look at the bottom right of the front. There’s a tiny letter and number. That tells you which specific engraving plate was used to print that side of the bill.
- The Green Seal: This is the Treasury Seal. It features scales for justice and a key for official authority. The design of this seal was actually updated in 1968 to change the Latin "Thesaur. Amer. Septent. Sigil." to the much simpler "The Department of the Treasury."
The Actionable Insight: What to Do With This Info
So, you know the history. You know about Weeks, Smillie, and the mystical Secretary of Agriculture. What now?
👉 See also: What Month is Passover? Why the Date Changes Every Single Year
If you’re interested in the design of money, the best thing you can do is start looking for "Star Notes." Sometimes, when a bill is damaged during the printing process at the BEP, they replace it with a new one. But they can’t reuse the serial number, so they print a little star at the end of the new serial number.
Because the $1 bill design is so static and "locked in" by law, these tiny variations—like star notes or printing errors—are the only "new" things that happen to the bill.
Next Steps for the Curious:
- Check your wallet: Look for a "Star Note" ($1 bills with a star in the serial number). Collectors often pay $5 to $50 for them depending on their rarity.
- Visit the BEP: If you're ever in D.C. or Fort Worth, you can take a tour and see the actual high-speed rotary presses that still use the designs perfected by Edward Weeks in the 30s.
- Compare Generations: If you can find a "Silver Certificate" (they have a blue seal instead of green), look at the back. You'll see how the design was slightly different before the 1935 overhaul.
The $1 bill isn't just money. It’s a 90-year-old piece of graphic design that 330 million people agreed to never change. It’s a miracle of bureaucracy. It’s a mess of Latin, masonry, and steel engraving. And now you know exactly whose hands—from George Smillie to FDR—actually shaped it.