18. City Museum

We have begun playing our way through our Summer Fun List.  One of the first places we visited was the City Museum in downtown St. Louis.  This place is crazy and amazing!  Below you will find a brief description, or you can click here to read some more interesting details about this unique place! This definitely has to be a one-of-a-kind attraction. You know you are walking into someplace interesting when there is a school bus hanging over the edge of the roof.

Housed in the 600,000 square-foot former International Shoe Company, the museum is an eclectic mixture of children’s playground, funhouse, surrealistic pavilion, and architectural marvel made out of unique, found objects. The brainchild of internationally acclaimed artist Bob Cassilly, a classically trained sculptor and serial entrepreneur, the museum opened for visitors in 1997 to the riotous approval of young and old alike.
Cassilly and his longtime crew of 20 artisans have constructed the museum from the very stuff of the city; and, as a result, it has urban roots deeper than any other institutions’. Reaching no farther than municipal borders for its reclaimed building materials, CITY MUSEUM boasts features such as old chimneys, salvaged bridges, construction cranes, miles of tile, and even two abandoned planes! And a ten story spiral slide!

This sign greets you as you walk in the door:

Julia has her bracelet on and is ready to play.  She's just not sure what to think about the place!

We started out on the first floor, where there are all kinds of slides, tunnels, passageways, and crawl spaces(most of these are in the ceiling). Once the kids disappeared into one of those, we never knew where they were going to come out.

Here Jeff and the girls are looking at the "puking pig".

Next, we headed into the "caves" section where the 10-story slide is located.

Grant LOVED climbing in and on all this crazy stuff.  Johanna, not so much, as you can see from the look on her face in the photo below.  She followed Grant into a few tunnels and passageways, but not all of them.  Her and Julia were a bit too young to really get the most out of this place.  Julia stayed by our sides most of the time just watching all the activity.

Here we are at the bottom looking up at the 10 stories of stairs we were about to climb.

Only the spiral chute on the far left is the 10-story slide.

Why wouldn't you have an organ here?

Uncle Jeff on the way up.

 Here is a picture from the top, looking down.  Only the boys took the slide down.  The girls and I took the stairs.

Once we moved out of the "caves", we hung out on the first floor again for awhile.  By this time, Julia got a little more brave, and followed Grant and Johanna up these set of stairs.

Hello up there!

Johanna just couldn't talk herself into going down this slide.

Next, we headed up to the second floor.

Here the kids had some fun on the giant "hamster wheel."  There was no way Johanna was getting this thing going on her own, so a nice girl stepped in to help her.  As you can see, Johanna had a hard time keeping up!

Grant wanted to jump in and have his turn, too!

No, the door on this vault did not budge...

not even with little Julia helping.

We also stopped in and watched a short one-clown circus act.

And then it was back to playing!

Why wouldn't you have a wall of pencils here?

On the second floor, they had a section that actually made you feel like you were in a museum.

This room was filled with ALL kinds of lovely specimens.

Once we were done exploring the second floor, we headed to "Monstro City", the outdoor playground.

 I tried to get a picture of Julia in the balls with Johanna, but this was all I could get-the back of her head.

We didn't make it into the aquarium, or onto the rooftop this time.  We will have to save that for the next trip to the City Museum!