St. Louis City Museum

One of our cross country stops was in St.Louis, where we visited The City Museum. If you have children and live anywhere within reach, we recommend this Very Highly.

The museum is located in a 600,000 square foot former warehouse of the International Shoe Company, and "museum" is a little bit of a misnomer. There are some displays of historical stuff, but mostly it is a multi-story interactive art installation, a huge complex of immersive art. Your kids will just think it's the best playground in the world.

There is no map or guide to what is where, and it seems that something is always under construction, so visitors have no choice but to just start exploring. The Board of Directors leapt into the first tube the saw snaking around a pillar, and quickly disappeared into the ceiling. And so much of the museum is built from recycled stuff, particularly recycled industrial stuff.

There's a complex of caves, a whole bunch of hamster-tube type climbing runs, a three-story slide, a bunch of fish, tunnels that go from one floor to another. A few floors up there are a couple of installations for younger children--well, really, they're for parents of younger children who want to be able to see whatever the child is up to.

All of that is indoors. Outdoors is a whole other installation several stories high and loaded with more crawlspaces and I will tell you that it was when the boys were about to head into the very top I called them back down because my own acrophobia was fully kicked in. Apparently they did not inherit my irrational fear of heights.

But that points at what I find interesting and inspiring about the City Museum. I've logged many hours in many children's museums, and what most have in common is that you have to monitor your child and make sure they adapt to whatever rules the place requires. 

But the City Museum is centered on children, in the sense that it is built for them to use, not for them to be taught how to use it "properly." There's no "Honey, you can't put the plastic pork chop from the pretend store over in the fake fish pond" in this place. There's certainly a place for activities that require children to bend (we've spent many hours at various versions of water tables), but it's a whole other sensation to be in a space where kids can just be. The City Museum is not organized around what adults think kids should be made to do, or should want to do, but just around how kids are. All while being truly beautiful. 

One wonders, obviously, how a school could incorporate such a philosophy, to organize around students and what they want to, love to, do. 

At any rate, this is a fabulous spot. St. Louis is about a day away for us, but I think we may revisit it next summer just to stop here. You can follow City Museum on Twitter and of course visit the website. And at the end I'll throw in a drone trip through a tiny fraction of the whole thing.