A Love Letter to the St. Louis City Museum
Rarely will you find a quirky roadside adventure that duels itself as a genuine, well-accepted destination amongst families and vacationers. I can think of no example that has bridged this divide more than the famed St. Louis City Museum. I experienced the joy of the museum later than most. In the fall of 2013 the museum had already gained notoriety, but it was my first year living in St. Louis and friends had recommended the museum to me more than any other spot.
I saved the occasion for something truly special, my first date with Katie. She had never been to Missouri, and I had only been there a few months. Neither of us had given much thought to the actual contents of the museum. For the uninitiated, the word museum is enough to distract from the contents, no matter the mentions of slides and tunnels I overheard. I had spent more time thinking about our date, what to say, where to eat, than give the museum much thought before we walked in, and honestly that’s the perfect way to experience it.
Walking into the lobby was like being transported into the whimsical world of Wonka. Human hamster tubes lined the lobby, leading to a labyrinth of mazes, mirrors, and larger-than life sculptures. A once-abandoned warehouse, now transformed into a ten-story wonderland, revealed secret slides and hidden human skate parks on every floor. The pinnacle of the museum rested on the roof where daring sculptures seemed to defy gravity itself. A school bus teetered over the edge, a praying mantis loomed over another corner, and metal spires pierced 100 feet into the sky, daring us to climb them. Over the edge, a decommissioned plane balanced on cables connected by exposed tunnels.
As we ventured forth, the initial awkwardness of our first date dissolved into pure excitement and spontaneous delight. Unscripted, we laughed naturally, free from any pretense or small talk. Without a moment's hesitation, I hurled myself down a half-pipe like a playful sea lion, and to my astonishment, Katie channeled Miley Cyrus, fearlessly reenacting her infamous wrecking dance from dangling ropes. As we wandered the halls, every corner beckoned a new thrill. I meandered into a life-sized whales mouth, only to be met with a full-fledged aquarium. We were forced to squeeze through its blowhole in an intimate embrace.
We climbed through the tunnels to the suspended airplane’s cockpit. We opened the window shades and stared at the people walking the sidewalk below. We wouldn’t have traded lives with any of them. It was as though we had stepped into a dreamland where the world around us finally seemed to bend to our most joyous instincts. For Katie and me, it was effortless.
I was ashamed at my thoughts as I wandered the rusty palace. The building defied everything I thought I knew about building codes. It was an odd feeling to be thinking about permits and liability insurance while trying to experience the joy in front of me, but I couldn’t help it. I didn’t know there was room for something like this in our sterile world. I had been at the museum for less than an hour, and I was already worried someone would take it away.
I’m certain I wasn’t alone in this. As a child, the museum would have fit right in with my worldview. Somewhere along the way, it’s as if our world robs our sense of wonder. We accept things we used to find extraordinary as boring. My first time on an airplane was earth-shattering, but somewhere along the way it became ritualistic at best. From my current vantage point, in a decommissioned plane dangling from cables, I felt like a kid again.
Decades before the building’s unlikely transformation, it was one of the largest shoe factories in the country. The International Show Company operated there much of the nineteenth century sending shoes down the Mississippi and out across the world. Long after its doors closed, the decrepit warehouse was saved from demolition in 1992 by the visionary sculptor and St. Louis native Bob Cassily. In the early days of his project, him and his wife Gail would spend date nights wondering the dark halls of the building on roller-skates. It was a poetic upgrade from the heaps of tired shoes that had gone out of fashion. The building’s makeover would be far more exciting.
From what I have read about Bob Cassily, and from speaking to the many St. Louis natives who claim to have met him (a litmus tests that gives you final bragging rights), Bob channeled that energy better than anyone. He embraced the carefree attitude while balancing the dedication to see his innovative projects through. Bob had a gift for taking every beautiful aspect I see and love in an abandoned building and giving it order and life, magnifying the beauty ten-fold but preserving the risk that allures it.
He quickly ran into the same red tape that had dominated my own thoughts. Countless zoning and permit disputes threatened to throw the project off-track. The museum world wasn’t built for someone like Bob, but luckily Bob wasn’t prone to bend to the bureaucracy of all of it. When he was told he had to put a fence around the museum, he scoffed at the idea of a chain-link eye-sore. Instead, he sculpted a slithering beast wrapping around the perimeter with spikes protruding from its back. Bob refused to sterilize his vision. He wanted to sculpt art that had to be touched and experienced.
Bob’s medium of choice sometimes contrasted greatly with those before him. In a world that attracted dust and bemoaned flash photography, Bob could appreciate the works of the greats while wishing to breathe new life into his own sculptures.
In 1971, a young Bob and Gail Cassily decided to spend their honeymoon visiting Vatican City to see old art relics. Atop the list was Michelangelo’s Pieta, a marble masterpiece depicting Mary holding the body of Jesus. This renowned work had been an illuminating subject in Bob's college art history studies, an enduring symbol of 15th-century marble mastery.
As Bob and Gail viewed the priceless sculpture, a delusional man wielding a hammer climbed atop and proclaimed to be Christ reincarnated. He began to strike the masterpiece more than a dozen times with a hammer, severing the statue’s arm completely and sending dust and rock falling to the floor. As he began to strike Mary’s face, a bystander pulled him off and tackled him to the ground. The vigilante was Bob Cassily. As one tribute to Bob put it, “he saved one masterpiece and created another”.
Purists will tell you the City Museum isn’t what it used to be. I’ve lent a skeptical ear to stories of exhibits in the past that pushed the limits even by Cassily’s standards. One involved a latex room, where each step left a rubbery depression and visitors would sink further into the rubber until they were nearly consumed. If there is any truth to the story, I am certain a few visitors with latex allergies paid the ultimate price. Another told me the human-sized hamster tunnels used to lead to giant hamster wheel. Passersby would need to run on it to move to the next room, in turn powering the electricity in the lobby. According to them, pesky child labor laws ruined the exhibit.
As countless Midwestern families began to make the pilgrimage over a weekend, more curmudgeons complained the museum had become too mainstream. Some locals couldn’t resist the undeniable urge to keep something so beautiful a secret, mourning news articles and “top ten summer lists” the museum began to appear in. I can hardly blame people for feeling this way. Keeping the museum alive was my fear from the first time I stepped in it, but to hide it from the world was just as unsettling. If the nearby St. Louis Arch had earned itself the designation of being the only entirely manmade National Park in the United States, then the City Museum deserved to be the 8th wonder of the world. Let the people come far and wide.
As Katie and I crawled through the halls of the basement, we both felt an optimism of the future. Not just with each other, but with a liberating sense that the world was a bit more magnificent than it was before.
In those basement halls, I discovered the crotch in my pants had ripped somewhere along the way, and my underwear was completely exposed. Katie, whose head was only a few feet away from my rear as we crawled through the tunnels took pity on me, lending me her sweatshirt to wrap around my waist. The upgrade helped me go down the ten-story slide twice as fast. It was an effortless and beautiful way to begin our lives together.
It was an effortless and beautiful way to begin our lives together.
Some people watch life unfold in front of them, afraid to take risks. Others tackle a hammer- wielding protestor defiling a masterpiece. When it comes to the most priceless things in life, you can’t afford to stand by, and Katie and I would be married a short time later. A love kindled in those tunnels, and partly in a whale’s blowhole, has been a roadmap guiding us toward a more exciting life brimming with adventure. And on occasion, we’ve been inspired to transform our own tedius world, striving to find the beauty in every-day life.
More frequently though, I’ve been tempted to slip back into the mundane rhythms the world appears to foster. I’ve found myself on a flight tempted to peek through the window shade only to worry someone would think it was childish. In those moments, it’s been Katie to remind me to never lose my sense of wonder. It takes practice to foster creativity, and I am lucky to have someone who finds beauty in life every day right next to me. At times, she has replaced my tired shoes with roller skates for me, and lifted up the shade on my window seat to dazzle at the clouds. More often than not, she is the catalyst for unlocking life’s most precious gifts.
In a heart-wrenching twist of fate, the brilliant artist and visionary, Bob Cassily, met an untimely end at the age of 61. Tragically, he was on the construction grounds of his most ambitious creation to date, Cementland, when he passed away. Locals mourned not only the loss of a creative genius, but that his latest transformation would go unrealized. His passing left a void that seemed impossible to fill. For ten years, others tried to take on the project, only for it to be abandoned again. Earlier this year, the land occupying Cementland was finally sold, diminishing any last chance for transformation and further proving the echoes of many: there’s only one City Museum. Even more, there was only one Bob Cassily.
We’ve never found another City Museum, but we’ve certainly built its essence into the rhythms of our every-day life, embarking on countless adventures together. The City Museum is special to countless people for different reasons, but for Katie and me, it’s inseparably a love story. It left an impression on us at such an important time, just as our lives were beginning to intertwine. It's a reminder to live with open hearts and eyes, finding joy in the smallest of details and appreciating the grandeur in simplicity. The museum provides a snapshot of what the world could be if we were all more willing to see the magic in front of us. We were one of hundreds who left the museum that day forced to admit that life was a bit more glorious than we thought. For the lucky ones, this impact is an enduring one. As if the impression had been carved in marble itself.
To Katie, on her 30th birthday
Our first photo together was taken on the roof of the City Museum. I wrapped a jacket around my waist to cover my split pants.
