<P> City Museum is a museum whose exhibits consist largely of repurposed architectural and industrial objects, housed in the former International Shoe building in the Washington Avenue Loft District of St. Louis, Missouri, United States . Opened in 1997, the museum attracted more than 700,000 visitors in 2010 . </P> <P> The City Museum has been named one of the "great public spaces" by the Project for Public Spaces, and has won other local and international awards as a must - see destination . It has been described as "a wild, singular vision of an oddball artistic mind" and compared to the similarly individualistic Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles . </P> <P> City Museum was founded by artist Bob Cassilly and his then - wife Gail Cassilly . The museum's building was once an International Shoe Company factory and warehouse but was mostly vacant when the Cassillys bought it in 1993 . Construction began in January of 1995, and the museum opened to the public on October 25, 1997 . Within two years, it was drawing 300,000 visitors a year . Cassilly remained the museum's artistic director until his death in 2011 . </P> <P> The museum has regularly expanded, adding new exhibits such as MonstroCity in 2002, Enchanted Caves and Shoe Shaft in 2003, and World Aquarium in 2004 . </P>

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