Finally, a Use for Pennies!

Photo from Notcot.com.

I never set out to be anti-penny, but somehow it happened, and I have gone on the record more than a few times arguing that the penny should be eliminated.
While I stand by my belief that the penny is lousy as currency, someone has finally come up with a use for pennies that has made me reconsider my extinction argument: make a floor out of them! (You can also make a wall out of them.)
The penny floor can be found at the Standard Grill at the new Standard Hotel in New York, the one straddling the High Line. The Standard tells us that it used 250 pennies per square foot, or 480,000 pennies in all.
For those of you thinking about a home renovation, that’s $2.50 per square foot in flooring materials. That stacks up pretty well to glass tile ($25.00/sq. ft.), white onyx marble ($12.50/sq. ft.), porcelain ($6.00/sq. ft.), or even prefinished walnut ($5.00/sq. ft.).
For anyone going the penny-floor route, I guess the big question would be whether to opt for all-heads, all-tails, a set pattern, or a random effect.