Not only the exhibitions of the Money Museum are rich in their history, but so too is the building where the museum itself is located.
The building that houses the Money Museum (Totorių g. 2/8) is even older than the main building of the Bank of Lithuania (Gedimino pr. 6). In August 1874, the Vilnius Province Construction division issued a permit to Tadas Koszczyc, a second-class merchant guildsman, to build a two-story stone building at the intersection of Totorių street and Georgijaus (Gedimino) avenue. A two-story home, in a T-shape, was built on the trapezoid-shaped plot of land. In July 1875, Koszczyc was given a permit to add a third story to the house. The newly bricked house was enclosed on three sides by a wooden fence and had masonry steps. In 1899, in place of the former outbuilding, next to the house at Totorių street, a three-story building was erected, with entrance gates and at the corners of both projections, bay windows — balconies —supported by columns. This is how the façade, very unusual for the architecture of Vilnius in the historicism period, was formed.
At the turn of the 19th–20th century, a lot of new work was done here. The balconies, walls and even the attic cornice of the house, painted in intense brownish colours, were pasted with different kinds of advertisements announcing the restaurant that opened there, a rolls and bagels shop, an oculist’s office, lawyer’s office.
After World War II, the house was nationalised. In 1960, the building housed the extramural division of the State Pedagogical Institute. Later, the first and second stories of this house were occupied by the Labour Security Inspectorate of the Lithuanian SSR Ministry of Social Security and the third floor – by a branch of the USSR International Bank of Economy. Until 2006, the corner of the first floor was a pharmacy. After Lithuania’s independence was restored, the building became part of the Bank of Lithuania. For a time the bank – mainly its International Relations Department – only occupied the third floor. The other premises were used by the National Centre for Recruitment, Retraining and Vocational Orientation (Labour Exchange). After the pharmacy and Labour Exchange moved out, the house was restored, the historical façades were recreated.
A new Bank of Lithuania museum exhibition was opened in 2010. The museum itself was actually founded on 25 June 1999 and its exhibits are held in the bank’s old vault. Once it moved to the new premises, the Bank of Lithuania museum was renamed the Money Museum.
