And the winner is...City Museum in St. Louis

Saturday December 5 2009

I don't know how many museums I've visited in the last few weeks, but it's been a lot and most of them were wonderful in different ways.  Trying to list my favorite would be, I thought, like choosing which of my two children is "best." 

But St. Louis's City Museum stole my heart.  It's a kids museum, but "kids" ages are defined as roughly between 1 and 100 years.  It's the most hilarious, idiosyncratic, noisiest, funkiest museum I've ever seen, and I can't wait to return. 

I wonder if my immediate seduction by the museum is because it's completely recycled.  Nothing in, on, or around  it, including the building itself, is what it was meant to be.  Bob Cassilly, the genius sculptor who created the museum in downtown St. Louis 10 years ago, bought the old International Shoe Company building and with the help of 20 artisans who are still working on it, created the zaniest space one can imagine.  As you walk up to it, you see a school bus perched on the roof; despite it's positioning, kids play in it all the time (although I can't imagine how parents can watch).  Up on the roof there's also a ferris wheel.  Adorning the building are two Saber 40 aircraft fusselages, a fire engine, a castle turret, a 25' tall cupola, and various 4' wide wrought-iron "slinkies" with kids crawling around in them. 

After you pay $12 for admission (plus another $6 for the new aquairium and another $5 for entrance to the roof), your instincts take over.  And you just gape.  And laugh.  And if you're a kid sliding down one of the eight or so slides, you're screaming, too. 

The entire floor on the entry level is made of beautifully designed sea life with handmade tiles from California.

Note the clear glass eyes in the fish--through them you often see children's hands as they reach up from the "enchanted caves" that used to be International Shoe's special conveyor system for its products.  I didn't slide down the hole because I suffer from claustrophobia, but I could tell from the shrieks coming from down there that the kids thought it was pretty spiffy.

The marine life imagery of the first floor was desiged because the building was originally going to be the home of the city acquairium.  Life got in the way of that plan and the acquairium didn't get there until recently, but it must feel right at home with all of the sea life imagery everywhere.

There are thousands of decorated spindles that make up the stairway from first to second floor.  Intricately decorated architectural pillars are everywhere  The one above is made of old watch bands.  I don't think the watch bands are visible, but they're what make up the stripes.

The Skateless Park is where kids can swing from ropes, balance on a 76' long pencil, bounce off walls, do other child-like activities.  There's a Circus room where acrobats, gymnasts and jugglers perform every day, and where the museum holds its "circus classes" for kids.  On the same floor there are enormous rooms where kids can do their own art.  One of the rooms posted a sign “Japanese Doll Making at 2.”   Have I mentioned the treehouse, the belly of a whale for exploration, an old bank

vault, and a '60's memorabilia section.  Around the building one finds a Wurlitzer pipe organ, old chimneys, salvaged bridges, a room full of preserved insects, and so on and so forth.  There are many slides for either

sliding or climbing, like this one.

 For grown-ups, there are hundreds of architectural elements, many of them from Louis Sullivan buildings.  Not to mention walls made up of old printers' type. 

A St. Louisan who collects vintage opera posters donated some dozens of them that now hang in a hugely vaulted hall with opera recordings playing continuously.On the second floor there's a shoelace factory where you can buy not just shoelaces, but bracelets and keyrings and zipper attachments and other shoelace tchtchkes being made by four old shoelace machines from the old shoe factory.  It's worth noting for folks my age that this is the same International Shoe company building where Tom (later Tennessee) Williams worked while he wrote "The Glass Menagerie." 

We saw dozens of school groups walking around with lists.  I snuck a peak at one of the lists and discovered the kids were there on scavenger hunts.  Sample questions:  "How many blue minerals are on the stone pillar,? " What recycled material is used to fence off the puking pig?," "How many red spindles are on the right side of the staircase,?" "How many panels of butterflies are in the insect room?"  Cute.

I can't do City Museum justice, so if you want to "visit" it, go to citymuseum.org and look at their pictures.    Better yet, go to St. Louis and see for yourself.  It's quite the sight.