This Museum is the Ultimate Urban Playground
The pure potential of upcycling.
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There seems to be a competition in hip society, to see who can turn the most stuff into, you know, other stuff. If your drink bottle isn't made out of recycled plants, you run the risk of being bottle shamed, all breakfasts should be eaten out of old jars so adios to french toast, and if your couch isn't made of wooden pallets, do you really have a couch at all?
Well, you can stop competing folks, the late Bob Cassilly, artist and sculptor extraordinaire, has already won with his giant urban playground in St Louis called the City Museum. It is over 600,000 square feet in size and comprises of a ferris wheel, two old aeroplanes, and an abandoned school bus amongst other repurposed materials. It’s really great. The photos don't do it justice, because 2d and everything. But go type “City Museum, St Louis” into Google Maps and you’ll get a better look at it. Go on. Go. I’ll wait.
The museum has taken the place of the International Shoe Company. I say good riddance. Do you remember that shoe factory in Jumanji? It was terrifying. Anyway it’s a museum except it is also a playground and an art gallery and a full-on architectural masterpiece. Let me give you a tour.
On the first floor, there is a life sized Bowhead Whale, which, kind of cannibal-like, houses an aquarium with a whole lot of sharks, rays, gators and fish. There is also a treehouse and a tunnel maze built into the ceilings and floors. The enchanted cave is filled with creatures and the shoe shafts are 5-storey spiral slides that are still in tact from the building’s original set-up, where they served to take shoes from the loading dock to any of the building’s floors.
The second floor contains the vault room, which is complete with authentic vault doors that once secured a bank in Chicago. The second floor also holds a shoelace factory, which produces custom made laces for visitors - just to tie in with the building’s roots. No pun intended.
The third floor is made up of a skateboard park where skateboarding is not permitted, but instead is filled with rope swings and squishy mats to land on. There is a circus school, an art school, a model train, and a few of your more orthodox museum attractions such as a doorknob collection.
The fourth floor currently sells donuts while they decide what to use the space for on a more permanent basis. I say you can’t beat donuts. Lock them in.
There are ten floors, so I won't walk you through every one, but the roof is worth a mention. It is home to the ferris wheel, “Big Eli,” that calls tourists in from far and wide, as well as a pond, a school bus and a giant rope swing.
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