The City Museum, located in St. Louis, Missouri, is one of the coolest museums I have ever been to. However, calling it a “museum” is a bit of a stretch. The retired shoe factory turned recycled playground in St. Louis, Missouri, is nothing like any museum I have ever seen!
What to Do
Voted the Number One Family Attraction in the World by Trip.com, The City Museum is an incredibly fun place to visit. Housed in a 600,000 square foot, 10 story retired shoe factory, the museum has was converted to an enormous playground by a group of local artists in the 1990s. As a result, what was once a dirty factory became a series of caves, jungle gyms, and sites of exploration for both children and adults.
Your first glimpse of the museum will shock you. On the front of the building, an enormous jungle gym created from recycled material found around St. Louis. Sculptor Billy Cassidy transformed local “junk” into a stellar piece of art and adventure, reaching high into the sky of the city.
Inside, man-made cave systems and more artistic jungle gym equipment winds through every nook and cranny of the building. Caves can go underneath the floor, and climbers can end up looking down high over other visitors. In addition to bizarre and exciting tunnels to explore, the museum houses a slide that spans all 3 floors of the building!
Climbing through the tight tunnels can be exhausting. While resting up for your next exploration, I highly recommend visiting the art center. I visited in October of 2018 during a US road trip, and met an incredibly talented and interesting artist, Marion Nichol, working there. She creates exquisite paper snowflakes! It was so fun sitting with her while she told us stories about the history of the museum as we cut out her snowflake designs.
Check out her incredible book to make these snowflakes for yourself here!
Stories About the Museum
The stories Marion told us were so interesting, I just had to include them in the article. She had worked in the museum for many years and insists that the building is haunted. As it was a shoe factory in the 1800s, factory safety and child labor laws were not in effect yet. As a result, she insists that young children who died in the factory remained in the building. She showed us multiple pictures of floating orbs of light interrupting others’ candid photos over the years in the museum and told us about hearing laughing and tiny running feet through the building. Eek!
What to Eat
The museum has a cafeteria to grab lunch, but I recommend visiting a local pizza place in Downtown St. Louis instead: Imo’s Pizza! Imo’s is my favorite pizza of all time. That’s right: OF ALL TIME! I went to St. Louis often growing up, and always insisted on a pizza from Imo’s while there. The local pizza chain is famous in the city, and can only be found in St. Louis. The secret is they use Provel cheese instead of the traditional mozzarella, a St. Louis specialty. The result is absolutely mouth-watering!
A visit to the City Museum will be an exciting, adventurous, and exhausting (but worth it!) experience for both adults and children. The long operating hours make the fees worth it. Just be sure to utilize the paid parking on the museum grounds, as downtown St. Louis can get dangerous, especially at night. There’s no need to worry as long as you’re smart about where you park!
Have you ever been to the museum? Have you ever tried Imo’s pizza? Let me know!
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