Visit City Museum in St Louis & Go Wild!

In St Louis, Missouri, less than 2 miles from the Gateway Arch is a 10 story, 600,000 square foot warehouse transformed into a steampunk fantasy wonderland.  The City Museum in St Louis is not your typical museum.  It’s not like anything you’ve done or seen before.  It’s not just cool stuff to look at, though it has plenty of that from vintage artifacts to dinosaurs & mythical creatures to a large aquarium and world’s largest oddities.  USA Today ranks it as one of the top children’s museums in North America, but it’s way more than that, too.  The reason it stands apart from any other is the experience.  Of being a kid set loose in an industrial funhouse.  You’ll play harder than you’ve played for years.  Climbing, sliding, scooting, crawling.  Down a 10 story slide, one of 30 slides.  There are 4 main levels plus the Rooftop that will have you crawling through coils and down secret tunnels, across sky-high bridges, scooting through mazes, sliding down ramps.  Climbing up and around, looping through the building and sky through winding, corkscrew spirals.  It’s often called the world’s largest playground.  Time magazine named it one of the ‘World’s Coolest Places’.  It’s a big title.  And well earned.  

The City Museum occupies a 100 year old former shoe company warehouse.  Its creator, sculptor Bob Cassilly, created his vision of fantasy & fun using recycled & re-purposed, local materials and transformed them into something wonderful, magic to people of all ages.  Cassilly and his crew of sculptors, welders & artists set about to make a “city within a city”, but it’s more like another world within the city.  They used old chimneys & tiles, salvaged bridges & buildings, construction cranes & pieces, and even two abandoned airplanes.  They started in 1993 and worked for 4 years in secret before welcoming visitors.  Since Cassilly’s passing, they continue to install new attractions and exhibits, refresh and re-invent the ever-evolving museum to keep it and his dream alive.  You could visit the City Museum over and over and there is always something new to see because it is never done and according to their plan, it never will be.  They don’t just change out exhibit displays like most museums, they add and change even the structure.  Part of its one of a kind character is that there’s a surprise, a new wonder around every bend.  It would take days to see and do everything here, then it changes, again.