You may have heard of City Museum, a museum in St. Louis built inside of an old shoe factory. City Museum is not like a typical museum, though still full of art. It is more similar to a playground, evident by its features you’ll find nowhere else, like a 10-story slide, cave system built out of concrete, aquarium, ferris wheel, and even a bus hanging off the side of the building.
Open for 25 years, City Museum tickets cost $20 online for a daily ticket, and $40 for a member pass. There are extra tickets to get into places like Pinball Hall, the roof, and extra events like Fright at the Museum.
The museum is full of places to explore, hidden secrets, and art to marvel at. There are regular more museum-like sections within the more playground-like ones, if that’s more your style. At the top floor, they even have a room where they host crafts you can do with an instructor.
But the real point of the museum is its strange nature. Exploring the museum is like exploring a new world- and sometimes that’s the point. Go through a hole illuminated by black lights in the cave, and end up in an aquarium with different unique species of fish.
If you have the roof pass, you’ll find yourself with a perfect view of the city from the building’s roof, an amazing yet slightly terrifying sight for those with a fear of heights. The most iconic part of the museum, the bus hanging off the side of the building, is also located on the roof. You can enter it and look down at the rest of the museum and city below you.
Going down to the lowest section of the museum, the caves are equally iconic. They’re made completely out of concrete, and have many holes that you can crawl into and explore. They reach up to higher floors, and once up, you can exit there or go down a multi-story slide back down to the bottom of the caves. They even have an organ which occasionally will have an organist playing it.
If you want to take a rest from exploring, you can stop by Circus Harmony and watch them perform. Or perhaps you can stop by Beatnik Bob’s, one of the museum’s many restaurants. The bar itself is decorated bizarrely, with things like a fortune telling robot and a giant pair of underwear.
Perhaps instead you’d like to see the world’s largest working pencil, located in the skateless park – which features many ramps you can run up, slide down, but not skate on.
City Museum is for those of all ages, and there’s an area specifically for toddlers called Toddler Town in case you can’t leave your little sibling behind. The museum may seem scary, but it’s actually quite safe and regulated.
Their most recent addition is called Labyrinth, the largest new installation since Toddler Town. It’s a mysterious area, made out of old recycled pans and tins, filled with glowing, differently-colored lights and artificial fog that creates a bit of a creepy atmosphere. There are areas to crawl through and “hidden keys.”
City Museum is most certainly a unique experience you won’t find anywhere else. The way they reuse the structure of the building is so unique, turning old chutes originally made for shoes into fun slides, muffin tins into walls, and concrete into caves. City Museum is still expanding by the day, adding new exhibits, locations, and fun.
