Slashdot Mirror
St. Louis Museum Offers Thrills, Chills, and Lawsuits
theodp writes "Despite the whiff of danger, or perhaps because of it, the WSJ reports that the City Museum is one of St. Louis's most popular attractions. Housed in a 10-story brick building, the City Museum shows none of the restraint or quiet typical of most museums. It boasts a five-story jungle gym with two real-life jets kids can climb on, an enclosed Monster Slide that drops riders the length of three staircases, and a rooftop Ferris wheel. Sure, there are the occasional severed fingers and skull fractures, but museum founder Bob Cassilly contends that it is as safe as it can be without being a bore. 'They [lawyers] are taking the fun out of life,' says Cassilly, adding that 'when you have millions of people do something, something's going to happen no matter what you do.'"
I have climbed through their jungle gym and I must say it is quite scary. You definitely feel right on the edge of safe. Yet it stands out like no other "museum" I've been to. As such, it is quite provocative and truly unique, but contains minimal content and only satiates perhaps an hour of curiosity.
It boasts a five-story jungle gym with two real-life jets kids can climb on, an enclosed Monster Slide that drops riders the length of three staircases, and a rooftop Ferris wheel.
Kids? Every time I've been there there has been a significant percentage of 20-somethings in addition to the little ones.
else we'll have a whole generation who never really grow up into proper adults
Too late.
I want to add myself to the list of fans of this admirable place....
Here's a set of photos of the St. Louis Museum I took earlier this year.
The experience of climbing the spiral staircase, while listening to live music from the massive pipe organ was almost surreal...
Paul Gillingwater
MBA, CISSP, CISM
I lived in STL for 5 great years and took many, many visitors there. Every one of them was taken aback by the price of admission when they got there and every one was exhausted and saying it was totally worth every penny when they left.
Not only is the place a great playground for kids and adults alike, but some of the examples of architecture and industry that is displayed and incorporated into the Museum is beautiful and amazing to anyone who is into that kind of thing. The terracotta architectural pieces are totally rad.
One of the coolest 'exhibits' in the CM is "Caves". Nine stories of concrete and steel, molded into caves to explore. Walk along and see a hole in the wall...crawl in and see where it goes. Some spaces were tight enough to scare me, some passages went down and I found myself crawling through a rebar tunnel on a ceiling 20ft above people on the floor. There's a couple spiral slides that drop down through 4 or 5 stories. And the last time I went there was an automatic pipe organ that seemed to fill every spare inch of space in the building pumping out circus music, along with a bank of robotic percussion instruments behind some steel grate.
If you go to STL for any reason and you are between the ages of 1 and 101, you have to go. You won't be disappointed.
There's an old industrial site north of downtown that Casilly wants to turn into a water park with the same ethos. It's stuck in permit hell, but I'll continue to hold out hope.
...else we'll have a whole generation who never really grow up into proper adults.
That's already happened. Thanks helicopter parents!
I have been to the CM a couple times. It is definately a lot of fun. One word of caution though, there are some places there (that i found while trying to keep up with my son) that can trigger claustrophobia.
I have to agree with others that it is a must see.