The Board of Lady Managers, headed by Chicago socialite Bertha Palmer, wanted a woman to design the coin and engaged Caroline Peddle, a sculptor.

The reverse design, showing a kneeling woman spinning flax, with a distaff in her left hand and a spindle in her right, symbolizes women's industry and was based on a sketch by Assistant Engraver George T. Morgan.

Nearly half of the authorized issue was returned to the Mint to be melted; thousands more were purchased at face value by the Lady Managers and entered the coin market in the early 20th century.

In August 1892, Congress passed an act authorizing the first United States commemorative coin, a half dollar, to be sold at a premium by the managers of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

The decisions of the Lady Managers were often reversed by their male counterparts on controversial matters: for example, Palmer sought to shut the fair's "Egyptian Girls" dancing show after deeming it obscene.

[4] In January 1893, Palmer approached the House Appropriations Committee, asking that $10,000 of the funds already designated to be paid over to the Lady Managers by the federal government be in the form of souvenir quarters, which they could sell at a premium.

On March 3, 1893, Congress duly passed an act authorising the souvenir coin, which was to be to the specifications of the quarter struck for circulation, and with a design to be approved by the Secretary of the Treasury.

Hallowell contacted sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who recommended his onetime student, Caroline Peddle, who was already engaged in exposition work, having been commissioned by Tiffany's to produce an exhibit.

Palmer replied that the Lady Managers had decided that the quarter would bear a portrait of Isabella I, Queen of Castile (in Spain), whose assistance had helped pay for Columbus's expedition.

She also met with Illinois Congressman Allen Durborow, chairman of the House of Representatives' Fair Committee and a former colleague of Secretary of the Treasury John G. Carlisle, Leech's superior.

[7] Obedient to Palmer's instructions, Peddle sent Leech sketches of a seated Isabella, with the long inscription on the reverse; she hoped the Mint Director would allow her to shorten it.

Barber prepared sketches and rejected the idea, stating that the building would appear a mere streak on the coin in the required low relief.

Instead, he favored a sketch prepared by Assistant Engraver George T. Morgan, showing a kneeling woman spinning flax, with a distaff in her hands.

Carlisle was reluctant to allow an inscription which made distinctions by sex, such as "Board of Lady Managers", to appear on the coin, but he eventually agreed to that wording.

According to art historian Cornelius Vermeule, Barber's obverse design "follow[s] Gilbert Scott's Victorian Gothic tradition of photographic classicism, best summed up by the groups of continents and the reliefs of famous persons on the Albert Memorial in London.

[17] Vermeule traces that imagery to the figure of a young female servant, carved upon the east pediment of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia in the 5th century B.C.

[18] The art historian, writing in 1971, noted that "nowadays the coin seems charming for its quaintness and its Victorian flavor, a mixture of cold Hellenism and Renaissance romance.

"[19] Numismatic historian Don Taxay, in his study of early U.S. commemoratives, dismissed contemporary accounts (such as in the fair's official book) that Kenyon Cox had provided a design for the quarter; he noted that the artist's son had strongly denied that his father was involved in the coin's creation.

Taxay deemed the design "commonplace" and "typical of Barber's style", stating that "the modeling, though somewhat more highly relieved than on the half dollar, is without distinction".