SYMBOLS

$1 Bill

Move your cursor over the bill or tap it on your screen to see the reverse side.
$1 Bill front
$1 Bill back
  • Featured on the back, or reverse, of the $1 bill is the Great Seal of the United States, which was designed by Charles Thomson, a prominent Philadelphia merchant and secretary of the Continental Congress. Thomson submitted his design to the Continental Congress on June 13, 1782.
  • The Great Seal features an unfinished pyramid with 13 rows of blocks to represent the 13 states and symbolize their strength and duration.
  • The top of the pyramid features an eye with rays emanating in all directions and the Latin motto Annuit Coeptis (Providence Has Favored Our Undertakings).
  • The Great Seal was added to the back of the $1 bill during the Great Depression, in the 1935 series of silver certificates after Agriculture Secretary Henry Wallace interpreted the phrase Novo Ordo Seculorum in a banner below the pyramid to mean The New Deal of the Ages. Wallace and President Franklin D. Roosevelt were Freemasons, to whom the eye symbolizes the Great Architect of the Universe.