Sunday, January 27, 2008

City Museum - St. Louis


Probably the coolest place I've been so far in St. Louis is the City Museum, which is not at all what it sounds like. Housed in a 600,000 square-foot downtown building, the museum is an interactive playground and amusement park made out of unique, found objects. A crazy industrial artist named Bob Cassilly opened the museum in 1997 and keeps adding things, such as an aquarium, pipe organ, and a labyrinth of underground caves.
This photo doesn't really do justice to the vast outdoor play area known as MonstroCity. Bridges, spiral staircases, slides and catwalks are all linked together so that you can climb in and around everything. There are old chimneys, salvaged bridges, construction cranes, and even two abandoned planes woven into the glorious mess. At one point, I was climbing on my hands and knees through spiral metal tunnel you see at the bottom of the picture, hundreds of feet above the ground. Truly an awesome experience!

5 comments:

JohnA said...

More photos here. Looks pretty cool.

Anonymous said...

My friends got married there! It was brilliant. Grown-up playground + alcohol = good, good times.

johnO said...

Let's do a show there

Raej said...

city museum:
old buildings live on and give
me tired bruised knees

Basil said...

Oh wow, I want to live there. It looks like the Explode-a-torium in SF only bigger/better/dangerouser.