In the early 90s, this old shoe warehouse, sat empty in downtown St. Louis, was a hundred

years old, ten stories tall. This place had not seen a shoe or a person in the years.

And then, in 1993, a pair of artists bought the place and disappeared inside.

If you were there at the right time, you might have seen sculptors, welders, and mosaic

assists hauling their wares into the building. Maybe you would have caught a glimpse of

sparts flying through the window. But if you weren't there at the right time, you'd

see nothing just a rundown warehouse. But then, a year after the artists moved in, something

odd appeared. Outside the warehouse, a five hundred foot fence in the shape of an undulating

serpent. It was made of concrete and rot iron. It had these scales carved into it. The

serpent fence was the first clue that something big and wild was happening inside.

The project was the vision of Bob Cassley, he and his wife for the artists who bought

the warehouse. Bob passed away in 2011, and in his obituary, they told a story.

When Bob was a kid, building an imaginary city underneath the porch of his childhood home,

the overheard his parents having a particularly dull grown-up conversation. At that moment,

Bob remembered thinking to himself, what a shame not to be 11. Bob dedicated his life

to that thought. In 1997, two years after that serpent fence appeared, Bob and the team

of artists finally opened the doors of the warehouse to the public. They'd created a place

where you can be 11.

I'm Johanna Mayer, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible,

and wondrous places. Today, we go inside City Museum, a multi-story jungle gym and

a climable art installation made for the 11-year-old that lives in all of us. After this.

The first thing you need to know about City Museum. It's not a museum. That's my nephew, Max.

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