History

The crew built a 500-foot concrete and wrought iron serpent fence around the warehouse’s parking area. This was the world’s first hint at what was to come. The secret construction inside the warehouse continued for two more years.

On New Year’s Eve, Bob and Gail Cassilly allowed visitors to visit the work-in-progress for the first time.

The Cassilly crew completed their first major installation: a bow whale that swallows an accessibility ramp between floors.

City Museum officially opened to the public. Bob and Gail Cassilly’s children were on hand to greet several thousand very curious visitors. The museum they saw filled most of the first and second floors.

Local artists demonstrated glass blowing, pottery, and papermaking to visitors, who were then encouraged to work on their own projects. (Fun fact: City Museum is Missouri’s largest individual purchaser of art glitter.)

Under the glowing sign “Semper ubi sub ubi”, artist Bill Christman hung a giant pair of men’s briefs. He has never revealed why. Billed as ‘The World’s Largest Underpants,” the display has attracted visitors from around the world, has a Canadian fan club, and is the fourth most photographed installation at City Museum.

Circus Harmony, an internationally celebrated social circus, moved into City Museum. Its acrobats, jugglers, clowns, and magicians delight visitors with regular performances. A resident school trains students in the performing arts and life skills.

Someone, perhaps mistakenly, delivered a box of fossils to City Museum – including a 37-foot-long Tyrannosaurus bataars. This was only the first such mysterious arrival.

Bob Cassilly and the crew completed the first shafts of a system of caverns in the core of the warehouse.

While the Cassilly crew was working in another part of the warehouse, Bob Cassilly and a crane operator decided to hoist a retired bus from the Roxana School District onto the roof. They subsequently denied doing so.

The giant dome on the rooftop was salvaged from the St. Louis Science Center during the Center’s remodel. The steel frame was brought in and reassembled, and the Cassilly crew added a fiberglass cover.

Exhibitors attracted by the building’s history as a warehouse of the International Shoe Company installed an 18-foot shoe in the lobby to highlight a display of footwear from around the world. A pair of killer stilettos disappeared during the show and were never recovered.

The Cassilly crew salvaged the 1870s-era vault of the former First National Bank of St. Louis. The vault and its attendant safety deposit boxes were field stripped, transported and reassembled on the 2nd floor.

The network of caves begun in 1999 was expanded to begin climbing upward and spiraling downward, turning a maze into a labyrinth.

The adventure moved outside as the Cassilly crew began work on the nation’s largest outdoor sculpture. Constructed of salvaged stone and steel, the structure incorporated some of the 29,000 artifacts that Bob Cassilly had collected over 30 years. Visitors can climb through the planes, castles, and slides surrounding the iconic ball pits.

Opened on the museum’s 5th birthday, the 7,500 square foot park encourages visitors to climb and slide down the ropes and ramps.

A traveling circus left the pieces of a vintage Ferris Wheel in the parking lot. The crew fell in love with it and quickly reassembled it and started it up. In 2008, the Wheel was moved to the rooftop where it offers unparalleled views of the city. (Fun fact: Big Eli wheels were first built in Illinois in 1900 by the Eli Bridge Company. The company still exists.)

Originally commissioned by the Missouri Botanical Gardens, the 3,000 pound, 24-foot tall sculpture of a carnivorous mantidae was moved to the entrance of City Museum to be closer to its artist. Bob Cassilly’s Giant Praying Mantis now sits on top of the Rooftop dome.

After an early (and slippery) attempt to install a water feature in the parking lot, the Cassilly crew recreated a classic childhood experience: a pair of giant ball pits.

Originally gracing the Rivoli Theater in New York, the 1925 Wurlitzer and its 1,106 pipes were carefully cleaned and reassembled in the caves over three years. It plays daily. (Fun fact: welders working above it briefly set it on fire the first week after it was completed).

Circus Harmony moved into a new and larger venue on the 3rd floor. A new circus ring was built with a taller ceiling to allow for even more high-flying acrobatics.

To celebrate the largely unexpected success of his museum, Bob Cassilly threw the most extensive celebration of the arts in St Louis since the dedication of the Palace of Fine Arts at the Saint Louis Art Museum in 1905. Ten bands performed throughout the space and fire spinners accidentally incinerated a late-model Ford Taurus in the parking lot.

Determined to find a better use for the roof than a dog park and chicken roost, Bob Cassilly and the crew added fountains and giant slides to reunite visitors with the Big Eli Ferris Wheel, the Bus, and the Praying Mantis. The rooftop is open seasonally and access is free to City Museum season pass holders.

The heart of the old shoe warehouse was a chute down which workers on the upper floors transferred merchandise to the loading docks on the first floor. The Cassilly crew ground and polished it into the largest indoor slide in the Midwest.

Built by artist Ashrita Furman, the 21,700-pound pencil was installed in Skateless Park after an extended discussion among members of the Cassilly crew about what to do with it.

Initially planted only on the first floor giant tree trunks and slides began to spread up through the second and third floors and burrowed into tunnels underneath the museum. Over the past few years, the Treehouse has begun climbing up the outside of the warehouse’s east wall.

Internationally recognized sculpture and City Museum co-founder Robert James Cassilly, Jr., was killed in an accident at the site of his Cementland public art project in north St. Louis. "City Museum could easily have failed a thousand times in less creative and timider hands," Mayor Francis Slay said at his memorial service. "But under Bob's quirky leadership and with his refusal to give up, many dedicated artists ... came together to create something that worked in a wonderful and inimitable way."

Originally built to amuse Bob Cassilly’s own children, smaller versions of slides and climbers placed on several floors have given families a quieter, less intimidating introduction to City Museum. In recent years, Toddler Town has been consolidated and replanted on the third floor.

This castle is built from stones salvaged from a home that once stood at 3636 Page Avenue in St. Louis. It now houses the parking booth and is home to one of City Museum’s two ghosts.

Usually better known for another kind of slide, City Museum acquired over 60,000 glass lantern slides from the former Image Library of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. A selection of the slides are on view on the 4th floor.

The Center collects and displays work by internationally renowned contemporary artists, as well as murals by St. Louis based artists.

In 1997, Bob Cassilly sculpted 12 hippos that lived in New York City’s Central Park. Eventually, park officials decided to replace the hippo family with exact duplicates constructed of a sturdier material. The original sculptures were returned to City Museum and are now installed on the 2nd floor.

Unseen for 45 years, Louis Sullivan’s magnificent cornice once graced the top of the Chicago Stock Exchange. The 9 foot tall and 40-foot long terracotta section was reassembled by the Cassilly Crew and can be found in the Louis Sullivan Room on the 4th floor. (Fun fact: Look behind the cornice. You’ll see the handprints of the original installers.)

Beginning in late 2018, the Crew began building whimsical salt and freshwater tanks and pools on the 2nd floor to be homes for hundreds of real and imaginary sea creatures. Visitors are encouraged to ask members of the Crew what they are doing and discouraged from doing any welding themselves.