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It’s like the world’s largest jungle gym.
The City Museum in St. Louis has been pieced together with scraps of the past, all culled from within city limits. Fire engines, school buses, and aircraft fuselages are fused to the outside of an old shoe factory. Wrought iron slinkies, four feet wide, stretch from castle turret to ball pit three-stories about ground. There are, obviously, slides.
Grown adults and children alike play to their heart’s content. The inside is laden with old bank vaults, circus performances, and rope swings. There is at least one gigantic set of underwear pinned to the wall, and an exhibit about the corn dog’s role throughout history. There are pinball machines, and a statue from Big Boy Burgers.
You will get lost. The basement consists of an epic labyrinth, a faux cave system where children escape their parents with ease: some passages are barely a foot wide. Adults squeeze through with effort and the occasional strain on old, aging knees. They’re usually too busy laughing to notice.