With Charlotte Football Club’s first season in full swing, it’s common to see fans wearing the team's jerseys, or kits as they are known in professional soccer, around the city.

This year, the team’s community kit is inspired by a unique, now often forgotten, piece of the Queen City’s rich history with the country’s financial sectors.

The kit’s black and mint green color scheme is a callback to the city’s history with the U.S. Mint.

Dawn Turner with Tepper Sports and Entertainment said the team created the kit to reference the decades the city spent making U.S. currency. 

“We wanted to bring forth the key themes that are really important to the fabric of the market, and the two that stood out to us the most were royalty and the concept of the U.S. Mint. And we also think it’s an area that deserves a little bit of a nod,” Turner said. “I mean, I think we’re a banking capital of the world, we work with some of the largest banks ourselves as our club, and we wanted to make sure that we were incorporating that into the culture of our brand as much as possible.”

Turner said the team’s “Newly Minted” collection has been popular with fans and will be around only for one year. The team will wear it 11 times in the season. 

Across the city, an organization that coincidentally shares a name with the new kit said it was thrilled to be linked to the city’s new sports team.

“What we are standing in front of is the backside of the Mint Museum of Art. The reason that it is called the Mint Museum is because this building was originally one of the first U.S. branch mints in the United States,” said Ellen Show in front of the city’s Mint Museum Randolph. 

Just a few miles from Uptown Charlotte’s modern banking skyscrapers, Charlotte’s first art museum is hiding in plain sight inside one of its oldest financial buildings.

Show is the museum’s library and archives director. 

“I’m in charge of the institutional memory, basically,” Show said simply.

The building now holds art and history, but back in 1838 it was the home of U.S. coin makers working for the U.S. Mint. After gold was discovered in North Carolina in the late 1700s, the federal government decided it was too dangerous to ship north to make coins, so it allowed Charlotte and two other cities to open Mint branches.

“Congress approved the building of these three branch mints, so they could be a little closer to the action. That’s why Charlotte ended up with a branch mint,” Show explained in front of the centuries-old building facade.

Originally on Mint and Trade streets, from 1838 to 1861 the building created official U.S. gold coins. After North Carolina seceded at the start of the Civil War, the building changed hands and purpose in the decades after, never making coins again.

“In 1930 the building was condemned because the lot that it sat on was next to the post office, but the post office was growing and it needed to be expanded,” Show said.

Soon after it was torn down, a dedicated group of Charlotte residents raised $950 during the Great Depression to purchase the rubble and move it from its original spot. Now, it resides off Randolph Road.

“It looks like the original building on the outside, but the inside was actually redesigned to accommodate an art museum with galleries and office spaces,” Show said.

The group, which saved the building, decided to turn it into the state’s first art museum after reopening in its new home. Show said in the following years, the museum’s history has faded from the memory of Charlotte residents.

Until the city’s newest sports team unveiled the kit inspired by the U.S. Mint. 

“I thought it was a really cool way to take a nod at our history, and it was also kind of nice to see our name on their jerseys,” Show joked.

Show said the club’s new kits have been a great way to rekindle interest in forgotten history and are an opportunity to show off a rare piece of Charlotte’s coinage history.

“What we’re looking at here are the coins that were minted in Charlotte that we have in our collection,” Show said, showing off a U.S. coin, minted in Charlotte, for every year from 1838 to 1861.

As a result of the kits, Show hopes more people, especially soccer fans, come out to see these rare coins and learn about their city along the way.

In the meantime, the Mint Museum Randolph will be hosting its monthly Party in the Park on April 24. The event has live music, food trucks and a cash bar.

Visitors can spread out on the museum’s lawn and bring their own picnic baskets, footballs and soccer balls, of course.  

This month’s theme is financial literacy, with programs and activities highlighting the city’s history with the U.S. Mint. Admission is free to the museum from 1 to 5 p.m. the day of the event.

Museum staffer Rubie Britt-Height, director of community relations, said soccer fans and the soccer team are welcome.

“We also want the the team to be able to connect with us. Come over, have a great time, but also to learn more about it and make those connections themselves, because we’re continually educating people around art and our Mint collection,” Britt-Height said.

The Mint Museum Randolph is at 2730 Randolph Road.