CEMENTLAND ARCHIVE is a growing collection of interviews, photographs, and other materials documenting an iconic industrial ruin in St. Louis, MO. In the 2000s, the St. Louis artist Bob Cassilly, known for City Museum, set out to convert the abandoned Missouri Portland Cement factory into Cementland: part amusement park, part sculptural installation, part earthwork. The project stalled in the 2010s after Cassilly passed, but the site remained a wild patch of biodiversity and a popular hangout even as the property changed hands. We hope this archive will serve nuanced discussion of Cementland’s impact as a de facto active public art site that drew many curious visitors.
Cementland Archive has been facilitated by Danya (Daniil) Gerasimova (2023–present), Liz Van Horn (2023–2025), and Ava Richards (2025–present). Danya is a St. Louis based graphic designer who grew up in Kazan, Russia and later in the Chicago suburbs. After moving to St. Louis for college in 2018, they started hanging out at Cementland with their friends and grew more and more curious about the site’s historical and present significance. Liz moved to St. Louis from South Mississippi in 2018 to attend school. She is interested in public and infrastructural history and joined the Cementland Archive team as an excuse to get her hands on some cool archives! Ava, raised in St. Louis County, enjoys observing the diverse plant and animal species that make up Cementland's ecosystem. They are also curious about Cementland as a contested subject of artistic, political, and biographical narratives.
Since receiving a project grant in the summer of 2023, we've been collecting personal narratives, interviews, photos, documents, artwork, and more. We started with outreach, relationship building, and a social media page where a community of folks interested in Cementland could come together and participate in the project. With this website, we hope to create a resource for this community as well as an interdisciplinary research tool for academic, artistic, and personal projects dealing with topics such as architectural reuse, environmental justice, and public art within our regional context. Next, we are planning a printed zine that will outline potential approaches to engaging with the collection, from our perspective and from the perspectives of other contributors. We intend to share free copies of the zine with all of the archive's participants, leveraging the grant we received to cover as much of the production costs as possible.
Please email or DM us with submissions, questions, and comments!
Please note: the land Cementland is located on is currently privately owned, and entering may be qualified as trespassing. We don't encourage anyone doing that. Also, the views and opinions expressed by archive contributors don't necessarily reflect our views or positions as facilitators.
Cementland Archive has been facilitated by Danya (Daniil) Gerasimova (2023–present), Liz Van Horn (2023–2025), and Ava Richards (2025–present). Danya is a St. Louis based graphic designer who grew up in Kazan, Russia and later in the Chicago suburbs. After moving to St. Louis for college in 2018, they started hanging out at Cementland with their friends and grew more and more curious about the site’s historical and present significance. Liz moved to St. Louis from South Mississippi in 2018 to attend school. She is interested in public and infrastructural history and joined the Cementland Archive team as an excuse to get her hands on some cool archives! Ava, raised in St. Louis County, enjoys observing the diverse plant and animal species that make up Cementland's ecosystem. They are also curious about Cementland as a contested subject of artistic, political, and biographical narratives.
Since receiving a project grant in the summer of 2023, we've been collecting personal narratives, interviews, photos, documents, artwork, and more. We started with outreach, relationship building, and a social media page where a community of folks interested in Cementland could come together and participate in the project. With this website, we hope to create a resource for this community as well as an interdisciplinary research tool for academic, artistic, and personal projects dealing with topics such as architectural reuse, environmental justice, and public art within our regional context. Next, we are planning a printed zine that will outline potential approaches to engaging with the collection, from our perspective and from the perspectives of other contributors. We intend to share free copies of the zine with all of the archive's participants, leveraging the grant we received to cover as much of the production costs as possible.
Please email or DM us with submissions, questions, and comments!
Please note: the land Cementland is located on is currently privately owned, and entering may be qualified as trespassing. We don't encourage anyone doing that. Also, the views and opinions expressed by archive contributors don't necessarily reflect our views or positions as facilitators.
