I left you last week at City Museum, one of my new Favorite Places in All the World. Let's go back again today.
I want to tell you more about its creator, Bob Cassilly, whose prodigious talent, energy and imagination made this place what it is. He was a hands-on kind of guy who helped his workers transport an entire Ferris wheel, made in 1940 and discovered in a barn, to the roof where it was reassembled. It works. I know because we rode it. Across from the Ferris wheel looms a giant praying mantis he sculpted of metal.
We adults accessed the roof via a fairly traditional staircase. There are other ways to get there.
By all reports, Bob Cassilly was a risk-taker too. He didn't wear helmets or seat belts. "The illusion of danger is essential for any kind of adventure," he once said in an interview.
Cassilly scavenged constantly. Some of his finds were used pretty much as discovered, such as the two airplanes and the old school bus that are part of City Museum. Other finds were tailored to his needs, incorporated into imaginative sculptures, or made into some enormous compelling climbing toy.
This access to several of the floors in the museum, which I showed you in last week's post, was once a cooling tube used by St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch to cool beer inside their tanks.
He loved architecture and architectural details. The museum's pillars are decorated with assorted gargoyles. On the third floor, besides a natural history section and a pair of men's briefs billed as the World's Largest Underwear, is the Architectural Museum filled with pieces of St. Louis' history.
Cassilly was personally involved in every aspect of City Museum and had started on a new project, Cementland, on the site of an abandoned cement plant, in which he built pyramids and a castle with a moat. He had plans for treehouses and old machinery running on solar power and who knows what else. Unfortunately, we'll never know, as Cassilly was killed six weeks before his sixty-second birthday on September 26, 2011. He was imagining Cementland at the time, driving a bulldozer, alone on the property. The bulldozer rolled down a hill. These are his words from an interview with the Riverfront Times:
"I drive on the bulldozer and push stuff. You get free association going. Things come up that are random chance — you take advantage of that.... That's a very dangerous combination — and potent."
Cassilly pushed stuff: boundaries most especially. He hated rules. He is described in articles as "socially inept", a phrase I'm always intriqued by, as it seems to me that many or most of the world's geniuses can be, have always been, described that way.
Yes. He was quirky. He lived on the edge. He had no patience for mediocrity and popular culture. His work was his passion. He believed in play, for himself and for us all.
Thanks, Bob.
Bob Cassilly, the genius of City Museum
Epilogue: Bob Cassilly was the man who, in 1972 at St. Peter's Basilica, subdued Laszlo Toth as Toth attacked Michelangelo's Pietá with a hammer.
At City Museum, Cassilly's legacy lives on. Work continues, following his vision. Perhaps one day Cementland will be finished, too, to join the other whimsical playgrounds he built in St. Louis and Manhattan, and the sculptures that adorn the St. Louis and Dallas zoos.
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