07.21.2025
City Museum in downtown St. Louis, MO
Conversation with Danya Gerasimova and Ava Richards

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Rick Erwin is the former Executive Director and current Creative Director of City Museum.

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Danya:

Can you talk a little about your role at City Museum?

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Rick Erwin:

I was hired as the Executive Director of City Museum in 2006, and then in 2021 I stepped down to become the Creative Director. There have only been two creative directors: Bob Cassilly and now me. So it's really an honorary title. I'm just the old man who's been here the longest, who knows the stories, and knows where all the bodies are, so they can't get rid of me yet.

Day to day, I run what's left of the crew now. We've been as high as 20, but now we are probably 9–10. Only a couple of those are real crew members from Bob's time. But we come up with all the ideas and we do all the building now. So it's a pretty fun job.

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Danya:

Your LinkedIn says you are also an advisor for the St. Louis Art Center. Can you talk about what that is?

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Rick Erwin:

St. Louis Art Center supports the Art Gallery at City Museum. It's owned by Dave Jump, a former owner of City Museum who still supports City Museum. He gave me a bunch of money to buy stuff, so we bought a bunch of contemporary art. We've had Pae White, Kaws (we actually sold two Kaws pieces), Dustin Yellin, Do Ho Suh, Thomas Heatherwick, who's like the Da Vinci of our time.

It really just gives us cool places to put things out. And [Dave Jump's company] American Milling loves City Museum. Once Bob passed away and they took it over, I didn't have a budget. All I had was a credit card. As long as I was making people smile and we were having a good time and everybody was safe, they allowed us to do whatever. So Dave still continues that because he's just that good of guy.

Dave also continues to buy architecture. That was one of the big things that really made City Museum, the architecture. So right about after Bob’s death, we had started buying some more to fill the space. Nobody knew what we were going to do without Bob, and we didn't have a crew, because the crew worked directly for Bob out of Cementland. They didn't work for City Museum—that helped in lawsuits. So Bob never got sued; only City Museum got sued. Subrogation.

So St. Louis Art Center has been buying Louis Sullivan architecture for the last 10 years, and now it's probably the top private collection in the world. Some of the pieces we have are one of a kind. I'll go to Chicago next month, and we will pick up the rest.

And outside of that, I joined the Webster Groves Art Commission. Because, well, they put out a bunch of ugly shit, and I want to fix it. And then I'm an expert in playground safety. I also got kids, so everything is dedicated to the kids. That was part of stepping down: coming out of how hard COVID was and realizing I missed quite a bit of my first child. John was still younger, and I could make that up.

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Danya:

How old are they?

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Rick Erwin:

Annie is 14, and John is 10. They grew up here, and I can see everything about City Museum in Annie. Annie's confidence comes from City Museum, because that's what City Museum is. City Museum is all about building confidence. Having been here 19 years now, I have seen the same kids come over and over again. Their first year they won't go down this slide, or their younger sibling will, and they'll be like, "Fuck that. No way this kid is showing me up." And then they start doing it. So now my daughter is fearless, climbing on things she shouldn't be. But I also know that because she's been here, I have confidence in her. 

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Danya:

When did you start working with Bob Cassilly?

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Rick Erwin:

The story goes, in college there was a girl named Kaylee that I liked. But I had a girlfriend, and she had a boyfriend. But I still tried to hit on her quite a bit, to the point that I'd get pulled out of bars by my roommates, who'd be like, "You'll get your ass beat." I actually asked this girl to move to Europe with me, and she said no, because she still had that boyfriend.

But years later, I decided I was going to move back to Europe and do art conservation. I started to look at schools. And I can't write—dyslexic, ADHD, all that stuff. Nothing keeps me focused. So I went to my undergrad and asked them for help on writing my paper. And while I was thumbing through the alumni magazine, there was that girl—her photo in the magazine. I was like, "I want to know what this girl's up to." And they fucking gave me her email address. Do you know how bad that would be? There are some rules about that. But I emailed this young lady and said, "Hey, I want to know what the prettiest girl I know in real life is doing." And then I get a phone call from her. 

So this is a long story, but she brought me here for our first date. I didn't live in St. Louis, didn't know what City Museum was. I was like 250 pounds at the time and could barely fit into the tunnels. The first thing a City Museum staff member said to me was, "Have you been in the Vagina?" And that's because a certain tunnel in the caves really resembles a vagina, but I couldn't even get up that tunnel. So that was my first date.

City Museum was my last first date ever. Years later, I'm in Chicago grad school, still with this girl. We are now engaged. Everything is working out. Kaylee calls and she says, "Hey, I met this guy last night at the baseball game. He worked for the Cardinals and City Museum, and they are going to ask for your resume.” So I sent my resume to my father-in-law, who was working for the Cardinals. He built sports stadiums. This is December of '05, and I didn't hear anything from them. But I started doing research. I thought maybe they were going to make me sell lofts or something like that. I was like, “Alright, I can do that.”

And then in May of '06, just before graduation, I got an email from HR. It had no punctuation, the grammar was horrible, and I could recognize it because of being dyslexic. It was like, "Why don't you come in for an interview?" I was like, great. So I got to St. Louis, did my first interview with HR, and she was like, "I don't know why you're here. Most of us are leaving after the 10th anniversary. There's no room for advancement. Again, don't know why you're here." And I was like, "I think I'm good. I don't want this job."

I left, but then they called me again for a second interview. This time it was John Cassilly, Bob's brother. I came in a suit. Every time you come in a suit here, somebody thinks you're a lawyer, something's up. I come in, and this time he offers me a nighttime manager's position. And I'm like, "No, I've lived in a different city than my fiance for two years. There's no way I'm working nights." So I just gave up on City Museum.

Then two weeks later, I get an email from Bob Cassilly, asking me to come in for a third interview. I come in the front door, and they take me across the street and send me to this loft. And here comes Bob. He's got crocs on; his foot is covered in puss and stuff. He just came from Cementland. I was like, "What's the deal, dude? What the fuck? This is the third interview. What do you want?" He goes, "I'm not stupid. I don't want to run [City Museum]. You run it. Let me build."

So we just talked for a few minutes. I'd done my research, I knew everybody [who had this position] got fired. I knew about every lawsuit. And he really didn't pay me shit. But I called my father-in-law, who at that time was in London. I was like, "Look, I'm probably going to get fired from this in three months." He goes, "Everybody who knows Cassilly knows you're going to get fired. No director's ever made it two years. You might as well just go take it as a badge of honor in St. Louis that you worked for Cassilly."

So I did it. They didn't give me a desk. I didn't have a laptop for a while, so I was just known as "notebook guy." I would walk around and take notes. The first day of work, I walk in, and Bob is at the front desk. Bob had just had a baby, little Bob, crawling there. He crawls off the desk, and I catch him. I put him back up, and Bob goes, "This is going to work out great." And he takes this baby and walks away. John Cassilly is there, and he looks at me and goes, "Are you here to take my job?" And I go, "I think I just did."

And that was my whole start at City Museum. Even the first week, they still didn't let me do anything. I installed sinks before I ever did anything with City Museum. It was a long process, but they came chasing after me, which is the wildest shit. This is the coolest place to work.

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Danya:

So Bob's leadership position was more hands-on, and you were doing more administrative work?

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Rick Erwin:

The rule was as long as I could get all of my office work done, I could get out of the office. And I hate being in an office; I love to learn. So he would do the building, and then I would handle all the administrative work, and then slowly he would work me into things. 

The first thing I was allowed to do was the exteriors of bathrooms. You know how at food places, they have those rubber curtains that hang down the meat lockers and shit? That was our first floor bathroom door.

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Ava:

I remember that!

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Rick Erwin:

They're clear, but by the end of the year they get dirty, and they disgusted the shit out of me. So he was like, "Go for it." And I got to go through the building and pick out what I wanted. I did glass block. Bob came in and he made some adjustments. And then he gave me another bathroom, so I built a bathroom on the third floor that was kind of Frank Lloyd Wright inspired. And then I did the final bathroom on the second floor, which I won an award for, which upset him. So he worked me in gradually.

Then there was a turning point for me. On the first floor, we had those stainless steel pans all the way around, just an iconic image. On the other side of it, we really needed to add some water fountains. So I bought some stainless steel water fountains, and my maintenance team was trying to figure it out. The maintenance team is not like Bob's crew. Bob's crew walks in and everybody is like, "Ahh!" The maintenance team still got pooped on since they were mine. So he’s like, "What are you doing?" I'm like, "I'm trying to think like you, man. I'm trying to figure out where these should go on the wall. I'm looking at the mosaics on the floor and trying to find the spot where I won't interrupt them." And he goes, "Just fucking hurry up."

The next day, I'm driving to work, and he calls me and he goes, "Hey, I found a fallacy in your thinking." And I was like, "What's that?" He goes, "Well, if you think like me, you're going to screw up. Just do what you want to do. And then it's true and it's real." And in true Bob fashion, he sat there for a minute. And I'm like, “Alright, this guy is pumping me up. Let's do this. I'm ready. Let's go build some shit.” And then he goes, "I like some of what you do." And then he hung up.

So that was the moment that really allowed me to be much freer with City Museum and really start to produce ideas for him. And at that point, he would talk to me about ideas. I'd get the project list, and we could work through it. If he had an idea or I had an idea, say we wanted to do something on that wall, I'd take a hammer and just throw a hammer through it and break a hole in it. And that way we had to deal with it. We either had to build something or we had to fix it. That worked all the way up until his death.

And he got softer and softer. At first, he was hard Bob, he was difficult. But in the end, especially after Max [Cassilly] went through that situation with the shooting, he had softened up. He would call and be like, "Hey, how you doing?” Like, Bob, this isn't our relationship. I don't know how to deal with you on this level. 

Annie was born in May of the year before he died. I went to him and said, "Bob, I'm having a baby." And he goes, "Oh, my condolences or congratulations. I don't know your feelings on this." But then two weeks later, he comes back from the salvage shop and he goes, "Hey, I got something for you. I'll be right back." He comes back and he's got this rocking horse. I now regret having ran into him at that moment. I would've loved to see what he could've turned that rocking horse into. That'd be a really cool item. But Bob was like, "So here's what you do. Go in the shop, fix it up. And then tell your wife you made it here." And I was like, "Bob, that's why you're on wife number three. My wife knows I can't do this. That's a straight out lie, and it's not going to work."

There was a point where he felt like I was hiding stuff from him. And we got in a fight, but I really had nothing to hide from him. And from that moment on, it was just mutual respect. It really worked out. He protected me. When you're running a place like City Museum, you take a lot of risks. You gotta have a guy behind you who's got big balls and money, so you get more and more encouragement. And so to have Bob and then American Milling, who were just like that too, was great.

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Danya:

Did Bob involve you in Cementland at all?

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Rick Erwin:

I would go out there when Bob was in trouble, usually on the weekends. He would come down here [to City Museum] and do something, piss somebody off. And then I'd have to go out to Cementland. As soon as he saw me, he knew he was in trouble. He'd make me ride that goddamn bulldozer on the side. And we’d go to that bridge over the river.

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Danya:

Do you mean the barge pier?

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Rick Erwin:

Yeah. He owned that land across the road too. That's the land that got sold first, I guess. And so we'd go out there and we'd sit. I'd hang out with him, and he'd talk about ideas.

And he took care of me. It was really weird. If I came into the room when they were doing concrete, he would always make sure I had a respirator and gloves on. Didn't give a fuck about anybody else, but I was the one. He was like, "This kid doesn't know what he's doing." So when Annie was born, he was like, "You gotta change your hours." I was working at least 60 hours easy. I loved it. My wife was working too. We didn't have anything. I lived in Dogtown, so it was super easy to get here.

So Bob was like, "We need to change your schedule. You need to back off. You need to spend more time with your kids." So we started talking about Cementland. He was like, "We're going to open this year." I go, "No, we're not. We don't have bathrooms, we don't have parking, and we don't have AC." He goes, "It's outdoors, so they can use the restroom. And then parking—we got grass everywhere. It's fucking wonderful." And I was like, "We're never going to open it."

But I would get sold through on materials. A lot of the time people would contact City Museum before Bob. So say turbines and other things that he would get out there—I would be the one to procure and then get them to him. And then he would have Ricky Fortner and the guys pick it up.

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Danya:

So would you say he was close to opening by 2011?

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Rick Erwin:

He was saying he was, but I think we all agree that he was never going to open it. Bob just needed a project to work on. There was a number of times that we built things at City Museum that we were never going to open. The most famous example—there is an area underneath the freight elevator. We broke a hole through and we started to build this metal flying saucer there. Bob's idea was when the freights came down, the chains from the freight would hit it and make all this noise. And there's no way the State of Missouri Fire Safety was going to allow that to happen. But he just wanted to make it. Sometimes when he had to let stuff out of the system, he'd just do it.

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Danya:

How was he splitting his time between City Museum and Cementland?

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Rick Erwin:

He pretty much had City Museum in the winter and Cementland in the summer. I think in '06–'07, he was spending quite a bit of time out there, to the point that he was neglecting City Museum. He had opened up Monstro and the Caves in 2002. So I think he knew something had to happen there. It wasn't that attendance was stagnant or anything like that. They were making good money. I just don't think he was getting what he needed. 

So it just worked out: summertime, he'd run out to Cementland and work there the entire summer. If I needed repairs, I'd call a crew member, and he'd send one out for me. Then he'd come back in the wintertime and work here. In September, we're closed Monday through Wednesday, so he'd have three days here and then bounce out so he could do a project. Around that time we started on the first floor Aquarium, building that tree house and everything. And then we opened the Roof in like '09. Those were his big projects. The way Bob worked, in the morning everybody checked in. He was the quarterback and he would give you your projects. I would have lists: look at this, think about this.

And then I would go out there [to Cementland] in the summer. I tried to go as much as possible, because it really meant something. If we didn't see each other, it meant that things were going really, really well. I'd go out and tell him his safety report like, "Hey, we had this many injuries". Or we'd get lunch. But really, it was just keeping him up to date. 

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Danya:

So work at City Museum would stall in the summer?

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Rick Erwin:

It would stall in the building process, but we'd have so many guests. Let's take this month, July. When I was running City Museum, it would be 120,000 [visitors]. Right now, they will probably do like 60,000. We were busy; you couldn't get around. So no, it really worked out well because then the museum wasn't paying labor costs. Bob was handling those through the busiest season, and then we made all that money to pay his costs [in the wintertime]. We paid him a lot of money because it was Bob Cassilly, his ideas.

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Danya:

Someone we interviewed mentioned that he would also bring “floor kids” from City Museum to Cementland?

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Rick Erwin:

Everybody wanted to work with Bob. I had one girl come in one time, and she hunted him down. She wanted to work directly for Bob, and he was like, "No, you gotta start with him." She lasted a week before she took off. But if Bob was doing any kind of heavy labor, and if he saw somebody that works down here working really well, he would steal them from me, and they'd go out there. City Museum would pay them. Of course, the other owner [Dave Jump] would be pissed off about that.

But he would take people, and slowly people would move up. Or people would get in trouble, and then you'd have to move them around. [Crew member] Robbie Dixon's brother Eddie was on floor staff. He got out there, and Bob fired him. But Eddie just kept coming back everyday, and then Bob rehired him, and at some point he ended up working for me down here. On the flip, there was Joe Bacus. He was a floor staffer who I threw a water balloon at once, and he threw one back—all fun. I went home, and he threw another one and hit a guest. I should've fired him, but he was a good kid. So I moved him to Bob's crew. Two–three years later, after Bob's death, Joe is downstairs designing and building stuff. It created his career. Now he works with [crew member] Dave Blum at BLA studios. He's an amazing designer. All of that just came from us trying to find where people fit best.

So yes, Bob would steal people to go out there. People would hate it; it was real work. But it also felt good when you got to go out there. City Museum was a family. We really enjoyed it. If my kids came in, everybody knew them and took care of them. They'd also put them to work. No free rides here. 

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Danya:

How would you describe the idea of Cementland in your own words?

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Rick Erwin:

Every time I walked around with Bob, it was just a new idea. The problem was he didn't have enough people to get him to the next one. And then he'd always get moved back and forth because of whatever municipality was pissed off. Like if you didn't let the cops in there to shoot their guns, they'd find the asbestos.

That's another area I'd have to deal with. He would piss off somebody out there, and they would demand something. He pissed off whoever was the alderwoman up there to the point where we had to put together a float for their parade on 4th of July to appease her. Chris Corvelle was the lawyer for Riverview, and he and I had worked at a head shop together years and years ago in college.

So Bob would bounce back and forth. But the idea was always whatever he saw. There were happy accidents with Bob. This took a long time to learn, but he'd be talking to you and all of a sudden, he'd just start staring. And you kind of take offense to it, but it's only that something just hit him, some idea. It could spark from anything. Like he wanted to do kayaks that could go all the way around [Cementland]—it was just anything.

He'd have these maps and models, and the next day you'd see a whole other section. And then you'd come through the Museum, and the trash would be missing a lid—he would have stolen that for the [Checker]dome model. We had those trains downstairs, and he would steal the trees out of them so he could put them around a Cementland model.

But Cementland ultimately was just the largest playground in the world, playing with someone else's checkbook. And it was everything that you could think of. It didn't ever seem to have a clearly defined idea. If you look at City Museum, we just build something big here, something big there, and then try to find ways to fill in. So I think that's what he had done.

The big front room that was going to have the dump truck in it that dumped all the water, like the Puking Pig [at City Museum] but this time with a dump truck—that room just made me uncomfortable. It was so massive. As soon as you pulled into the property, it was the big one right next to the Turtle.

It just felt like every time we were out there was a new thing. It always came back to experiences. It's the same here at City Museum. He went to Chicago, he saw the Field Museum, and he was like, "We need a natural history museum." And he knew George Diehl had one, so we just put one in. The materials dictate what we build too. It took a long time for me to learn that, but I learned it after he died. That’s what leads the next project: like he had all those beautiful pavers, and they all went up to that little castle area. And what's getting worked on also depends on what crew members you have at the time.

He was dumping dirt out there for a while. That was illegal. He tried to ask my wife, "Hey, how can I do this?" And she's like, "You can't do it. It's illegal. Stop." You have clean fill and you have dirty fill. Clean fill means there's nothing in it, so that's what he should’ve been getting. But he was getting dirty fill to build the mounds and everything, cause you pay less for it. You might find cemetery stones in it, tires, anything.

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Ava:

What was your wife doing at that point?

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Rick Erwin:

My wife is an environmental scientist. She cleans up gas station leaks. But that was Henry's job. Henry was Giovanna [Cassilly]'s dad. He was supposed to be checking the dump trucks as they came in, which there were whole lawsuits in that shit.

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Danya:

What are some of the materials you got for Cementland through City Museum?

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Rick Erwin:

Oh, we've had turbines, tons of stone, lots of curb stones, city signs, highway signs. We got tons of metal. We used to work with this scrap yard, Becker Metals. They'd be on Instagram like, "Boom, look at this." So we would see things, and I'd go and get them, and then they'd just go up.

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Danya:

In an older interview, I heard you mention there was an idea to put a restaurant on the barge pier. Can you talk more about that?

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Rick Erwin:

I don't know a lot about that. That was just an idea. I don't know if that came from him or if it was from [crew member] Steve Alvarez when I was out there one time. But when we had the memorial service everybody went down there and hung out. They took his canoe down and spread the ashes. 

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Danya:

You mentioned Riverview police did shooting practice at Cementland. Do you know more about that?

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Rick Erwin:

Yeah, they'd just come in and shoot. Bob was always in trouble, so he always needed to find a way to stay good. That area just worked out well. But one time they came in and something had happened. We were working on that side, and he wouldn't let them in or they pissed him off. Maybe he got called for taxes or something like that. So when he denied them, that's when we started to get a lot of pressure. So all he would do is just move his entire workforce to the other side of the county line, where he was back in the city, and he'd work there.

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Danya:

Do you know which building that was in?

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Rick Erwin:

I think that was the first one as you pull in, the big open one. Because they were working more down around the other areas.

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Danya:

So when you would go to Cementland, could you envision what the visitor experience could have been like?

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Rick Erwin:

At the very end, it was beautiful. It was really, really nice. That road that went up to the castles! The big lake. And they had this big tube, like a canister, shoved in the ground right there. The old concrete funnel had been flipped for the pagoda. And the flowers! Bob really loved the wild flowers. He fired this one employee because he cut them all down; that was the end of him. But it was just really, really pretty out there. It was wonderful. You wanted to go out there, you could definitely start to see it. He was not anywhere near close safety wise though.

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Ava:

And you said you still don't really know if he actually wanted to open it or not?

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Rick Erwin:

I think everybody will tell you that he was never going to figure out a way. Cause he just needed a place that was his to build. We say that you can tell the success of a project by the resistance from bureaucracy. And there's no bureaucracy out there. He just gets to build whatever he wants. And that was fully Bob’s: the partner from City Museum, American Milling, didn't own it. So he got to do whatever.

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He would've been years from being open. But he always talked about it. Even here, what would often happen is he would open something, and it wasn't ready, and then I'd have to shut it down. Cause you still have to get occupancy permits. I think the biggest thing out there was he covered all the manholes and fire hydrants.

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Danya:

Bill Christman mentioned that Bob Cassilly had an idea of having some of the crew folks live out at Cementland. Have you heard of that?

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Rick Erwin:

Yeah. So the whole idea here was it's a city within a city. You know he tried to buy the Checkerdome, right? He offered a check of like $250,000 to the mayor, and the next day the mayor fired the PR guy that got Bob in there. But his idea was, one floor would be a strip club, one floor would be a circus, and then one floor would be all your best friends and you all live together. He took his RV to Cementland and he lived out there in the summertime. So yeah, having the crew on property—he would love that. In fact, Nathan, who was a floor manager at the time moved out there to be closer to the project.

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Danya:

Do you have a sense of how he was funding it? Was it purely through City Museum revenue?

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Rick Erwin:

Exactly. He funded that and his other projects, like if he was doing a sculpture somewhere, through City Museum revenue. Bob didn't ever put a lot of money into assets.

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Danya:

How do you feel about folks going to Cementland since Bob's passing?

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Rick Erwin:

You know what? It is what it is. Nothing stays sustained. Everything changes. Unfortunately, I've seen the same now with City Museum. It's not the same as it was with Bob, and it's hard to see those changes. Just like graffiti art, you kind of expect it to change over time. He's not there to take care of it. Nobody else can. Go enjoy it, try to see what you can.

One of the coolest things out there is this bridgeway: you walk up to it, and it's upside down excavator rollers making the entrance to a castle. It's the coolest and prettiest thing I've ever seen. So if somebody is out there and they get to see that, and that inspires them to go build something else like that, that's amazing. That's all we're trying to do. If we can help build something else and spread it, it's perfect.

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Danya:

Do people break into City Museum often?

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Rick Erwin:

Yeah. We had a break-in a couple months ago, but that was actually people stealing beer. Back in the day, it wasn't really breaking in. Bob would just give people the keys. Like these river kids were floating down [the Mississippi] and they parked up [at Cementland]. And then one night, he just gave them the keys to the museum. I was like, "You're on your own, man. I can't help you."

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Danya:

We interviewed one of them.

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Rick Erwin:

Did you really? What are they up to now?

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Danya:

She's a drag queen, a mural artist; she has a mural at Cementland actually. Goes by Hugo Gyrl.

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Rick Erwin:

Really? Oh, that's awesome!

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Danya:

She was telling us a City Museum employee came in the morning, saw them there, and was really pissed.

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Rick Erwin:

Well, we knew, but we were all kind of freaked out about things like that. It's like when we had Torey Pudwill’s skateboard team here. I just couldn't see them do it. They were riding skateboards off the ramp on the roof and flying.

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Ava:

Down the main slide?

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Rick Erwin:

Down that big ramp, yeah. There's a video of it, and they're like popping the curbs. So I couldn't be here. 

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Ava:

Have you ever had issues with people hiding in places? Has anyone ever been found in the caves after close? I always wondered about the possibilities of hiding in there as a kid.

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Rick Erwin:

They started to have these, I wouldn't call them raves, but larger concerts on multiple floors. Someone was in the first aid room, fell asleep, and at about 3:00 AM the alarms start going off. There are alarms with motion sensors all the way through the building.

But you can see people in the caves. I don't know how they do it now, but we used to do a "shift change." Everybody would walk from the top of the caves down, and people would start to leave. Little kids, you tell them it's haunted. We used to tease all the time. When my kids would come in, I'd have them clean things and I'd be like, "This is what happens if your kid gets left here."

There was a handful of times people would try. Max [Cassilly] was the worst. Max was breaking in all the time. He'd climb to the second floor, jump on the rock when it was hanging there, and then slide his ass down. 

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Danya:

I wanted to run some of the City Museum timeline by you and make sure I got it straight. So first, the City Museum nonprofit was dissolved in 2002?

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Rick Erwin:

Yeah, that's when Bob and Gail were getting a divorce. I think at the time, Bob thought a divorce was going to be the end of everything. That's when he ran into Dave Jump, and American Milling became partners, and they went for-profit. It’s rare that a nonprofit goes to a for-profit and is sustained. And that had a lot to do with Dave Jump's funding.

When American Milling bought in, they were initially buying into the building, not City Museum. What Dave didn't know was that the building held the debt of City Museum, which I think was like $300,000. He found out after he signed the contract. So Dave's wife was never cool with City Museum.

The story goes, they had the governor here right when they were getting ready to dissolve the non-profit. They are downstairs, thinking they're going to dissolve City Museum but the building will still be Bob's. And while he's sitting there with the governor, this kid comes down the slide and is like, "This is great, this is amazing! This is the best museum ever." The governor said something to Dave Jump, and Dave was just like, "You know what?" And wrote a check. I don't know if it's bullshit or not. It got to the point where we don't know what stories are true anymore. Even Bob would be like, "That's a better story. Let's go with that one."

So Dave took over Gail's half of City Museum, the building, and the other buildings. And American Milling also sold Bob Cementland. They held that property and didn't do anything with it, and then Bob bought it from them.

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Danya:

So by the time Bob passed, he and American Milling owned City Museum 50/50. What happened with the ownership after Bob's passing?

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Rick Erwin:

It went to shit. There was no will. What we all learned is you gotta have a will. So there was infighting. When Bob died, the rumor was [he and Giovanna Cassilly] were getting divorced. She was in LA. She demanded a million dollars from City Museum before she got back. There's no will, so we are not writing a check for a million dollars. So the deal was, she could go happy and City Museum just writes her a check for the rest of her life, or she could try to get into a lawsuit. So it broke into a lawsuit.

City Museum had nothing to do with Cementland; that was all wholly owned by Bob. So that unfortunately went through [Bob and Gail Cassilly’s older kids] Max and Daisy. The shit they went through! But it was great for us having someone like Dave, who was just good with finances. He came in and said, "I got this. You guys just go run City Museum." And it seemed like he almost kind of fucking enjoyed fighting.

Giovanna would make all these crazy claims, like that we would turn off the power when her son came in just so he couldn't have a good time here, that we followed him around. And the crew still worked for Cassilly & Cassilly, and she was now the head of Cassilly & Cassilly. She tried to double all their labor rates. You might be willing to pay more in labor rates because you are getting Bob, like you're getting the genius. But she's no fucking genius; you're not going to pay double labor rates. So that really hurt us.

For the first year of City Museum without Bob, we only did repairs, painted the building. Secretly, I was talking to the crew with Dave Jump's approval about what we could do for them. Somewhere after Christmas we secretly worked out the deal where they would all quit and come be hired at City Museum. They got the same rates, vacation, everything they'd ever earned from Bob. They were all committed to trying to keep Cementland going, but there was no way they were going to be able to do it. [Giovanna] just had all these crazy ideas. She was spending money making music videos, just blowing it.

So they came here, and the lawsuits continued. They went on for years, to the point where I think Max and Daisy just finally relinquished Cementland, because they were just wasting so much money. It's unfair to Gail [Cassilly] to be covering all these costs. And Dave got it to the point where Giovanna was never an owner [of City Museum]. So we bought out the kids; they were taken care of. They had portions broken out into shares, and Dave paid them very well. We always wanted a Cassilly involved, but I think seeing how much they were having to spend to fight Giovanna, they were going to have nothing. And then to be honest, it's also easier if only one owner owns City Museum. It makes it easier when you do your audit. So it was 100% American Milling by 2014–2016, and we started looking at selling in 2017–2018.

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Danya:

How has your role changed after Bob's passing?

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Rick Erwin:

After Bob's passing, I thought I had to come up with everything and I became an asshole. Honestly. You get a big head—you've been working for this guy, and now it's yours.

We started looking into the lofts again. Bob had put lofts in for a number of years, and then stopped on it. With Dave and American Milling back in, we started getting back in there, because we couldn't build anything at City Museum. So one day I was laying out a loft design, and Joe Cummings who works for us had an idea. And I was like, "No, I want it like this." And then when Joe went to lunch, I saw his drawing. It was better than anything I could come up with. It was at that moment I had to lose my ego. I learned that I had to use these guys, and we changed City Museum from being one man's perspective to being a collective.

And that's the way it is. When we brought in the crew as well, everything became a group decision. I'd have the ultimate say, but you could bend my ear and talk me into anything, as long as everybody was on board, it was fun, and safe. So that was the biggest thing. It went from one guy's idea to the crew's ideas.

And the other thing was we started breaking the crews off, and maybe this wasn't the greatest thing. But we were building more, because you could have Mary and a team together somewhere, Kurt and Bobby somewhere, and Leef and Joe somewhere else. And we could have people that always got sucked out to Cementland or wherever else. So we were building more things. We had our largest expansion ever from about 2013 to 2017.

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Danya:

Premier Parks bought City Museum in 2019. How has that changed your work and the way the institution operated?

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Rick Erwin:

At first it didn't change much because I was still the GM. Over time, it's definitely changed. I mean, it's so corporate. We just built that labyrinth down there. It's fucking amazing, man. It's beautiful. Some of the best metal work we've ever done. Corporate came in and said, "It seems okay; we need to do this and this." And everything they gave us were things that you buy out of the catalog. And that's not who City Museum is. If you can buy it out of the catalog, I don't want it. I want to build it.

So it's that kind of thing. Like we do holidays now. Right now, I'm setting up for Halloween. I don't give a fuck about Halloween. I want to build a slide. I want to go build something off the side of the building, you know, something fun. So those things have changed. It doesn't have the life it used to have. You're the first people I say this to. And I don't know how long it'll be sustained like this. There's always a new group of kindergartners that think it's cool, but when you've been coming here all your life...

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Ava:

I came here for my 18th birthday and brought my whole group of friends here at night. That was the last time I had been here until a year ago; I'm 25 now. When I came back a year ago, it was interesting how much more signage there was.

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Rick Erwin:

The fucking signs everywhere, man! Like holy fuck!

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Ava:

I just have really distinct memories of crawling around in the caves, putting my hands in mysterious puddles, and hitting my head. So is all the signage and safety stuff directly from Premier Parks?

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Rick Erwin:

Yes. Bob would make me write the earlier signs, because I write like a child. That was funny. So they'd all be handmade paper signs. But yeah, that's exactly it. Everybody that knows Bob Cassilly thinks every one of those signs is too much. And I still tear them down. I have a degree in wayfinding; navigation is my thing, and Premier still will not listen to me. Signs and cameras, that's all Premier's attitude.

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John Kirwan, the newscaster from Fox 2, was good friends with Bob, and he had offered me something to build one time. And I was like, "Well, I gotta go ask the corporate office." He goes, "Bob's rolling in his grave."

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Ava:

That just made me think of another memory that I have. I remember coming here, and somebody had built a stockade and put a dummy in it. Will you tell me about that?

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Rick Erwin:

Sure. What happened was, we were getting sued, and the Wall Street Journal was going to do a story about Bob. I think the headline was "America's Most Dangerous Children's Museum." We almost put that on t-shirts, but then we were like, "It's a little too real to do that." So Bob decided, "Fuck all these lawyers. I want you to get the name of every lawyer suing me, put it on a piece of paper, and post it at the front." We never charged taxes to anybody, but that day we started charging taxes and we started telling people it's because of these lawyers. So if you don't want to pay tax, call these lawyers. And some people started calling.

Terry Crouppen, the ambulance chaser, would sue me all the time. And Bob was like, "We need to do something." I had a stockade leftover from Halloween, so yeah, we built Terry Crouppen hanging out there. And Terry would still call all the time. It got to the point where I made Terry dance. Right beside the front desk there's a hanger, and they could make him dangle when you came in. Then Terry sued me one more time for a ball pit injury. And I think Bob died just before we got to this, but we were going to make it so you had to crawl between Terry Crouppen's legs to get into the ball pit. So it's all about fucking with people. It's all fun.

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Danya:

And you stepped down as executive director in 2021?

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Rick Erwin:

2020–2021, somewhere in there, yeah. COVID was really hard here; this place is so hands-on. At the time, I started working to build a City Museum Chutes and Ladders game, so you could rent the place and play with the slides and everything. I was at spring break in Colorado, and the line to get into the building wrapped around the building twice, and we couldn't allow any more people in, and they wouldn't go home. And I just started to see the stress on people. It got to the point where it was putting a lot of pressure on my wife, and I was like, "Well, this marriage means more to me than City Museum."

So I went to Premier Parks, and I said, "Look, I think I need to go. You need to find someone else. You want a dollar in everything, and I'm not really that guy. I'm not looking to add. I don't wanna charge people more, I just wanna have fun." And they were cool enough to let me stay on as the Creative Director, and that's how that worked out. But of course—I know where everything is. My name's on all the contracts, so they have to [let me stay] for a while.

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Danya:

Has much of Cassilly's original crew taken a step back from the museum?

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Rick Erwin:

Yeah. During COVID, we were able to keep three of them. We were still keeping Leef, who is amazing. When I lost Leef, when you start losing designers of that quality, that's when Premier Parks should have been like, "What the fuck is going on at City Museum." [Crew member] Dave [Blum] had already left because I had to fire him; he went and started Such and Such Farm. And then I think we just had Leef, Joe, and Gregg, and then Joe backed off to go work with Dave [Blum at BLA Studios], and then Gregg left to go work with them. We brought in Mary, and I still had Kurt. Bobby had already went off to build cars, and Kurt finally retired when his dad got sick. Kurt was Bob's right hand man, and he had Ricky, who was the left hand man. So now all I have here are Ricky and Mary.

But we're still trying to work with Leef [and BLA Studios] on stuff whenever we can. There's something that Corporate wanted in the Labyrinth that they're going to build for us. They built our fire exits and stuff. And I still get things that I will send directly to them that I know City Museum can't do. Like if there's a repair at the Butterfly House, "Hey Leef, you guys go do this." Gregg Toscano now works for Webster. I got on Webster's Art Commission because they could never paint the Apples the right color of Bob's. So now Gregg is on the commission there, so he can take care of those things.

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Danya:

You talked about your mixed feelings on where City Museum is at right now, but do you see City Museum as a successful institution? And what are the metrics of success relevant to you?

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Rick Erwin:

Definitely, I think so. I probably felt City Museum's success more than anyone. I've reaped the rewards of it. I got to travel the world, speak at conferences, set up tours. In about '07 I went to Denmark. The libraries love City Museum, so these librarians wanted me to go talk about play, and they came over there, and then over here. That really introduced me to learning about play. I didn't have any children, so the first six years of City Museum, I blamed everything on parents. If a child was lost, that's the parents' fault. As soon as I had a child, I was like, "Oh shit, it's probably our fault."

I was doing the American Alliance of Museums. I was on a panel in Seattle with the Seattle Music Experience. I was going to actual things, and people were waiting to see City Museum. There would be conferences I'd go to, and I'd be giving a speech, and there'd be people in the front row wearing City Museum sweatshirts or t-shirts. It was really weird. 

I was flying to Iceland, and I get on the plane, and the girl next to me has a City Museum wristband on. So I was like, "Did you go?" And she goes, "I came just for that." We had tours that were coming from Hong Kong and went to LA, and they would stop here for one day to do City Museum and go. So yeah, it's a success based on everything that's come out of it.

Meow Wolf is here because of us. Otherworld, Factory Obscura—I can name you 50 different immersive places that have all come here, and we've been their inspiration. We've always said we're like NWA, and they're like Kendrick Lamar. We're old school. We're a whole lot more dirty than they are too.

But how would I define success? It's every day those kids go out. Every day you don't have an injury and someone goes out that door happy, it's a success. You come in most days and you try to find what makes you happy. But as soon as you see that one customer, and they're happy and they're having a good time, that's it. It doesn't take much. And I felt that Dave [Jump] had really set the bar as well. As long as people were having a good time, and nobody got hurt, and we were still making money, it was a success.

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Danya:

You talked about the national and international influence of City Museum. Do you feel it's local impact in St. Louis too?

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Rick Erwin:

Oh, for sure. When we bought the building, there was nothing down on Washington Avenue. They tell stories that the doors were rusted shut with urine. We've done quite a bit of work up and down on buildings over here. And because we later became a for-profit, we pay taxes. We had 850,000 guests in 2018 and paid taxes on each one of those. That's all money that went to the city coffers. 

You always run into somebody that knows a Cassilly or has some kind of a story here. And what Bob did in Turtle Park and Rootwad Park! Rootwad Park almost changed the entire football stadium down there. The stadium was going to be within its footprint, and they adjusted it just enough so that it wouldn't be touched.

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Danya:

Has City Museum's approach to community partnerships changed over time?

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Rick Erwin:

When Bob was alive it was, "Fuck you, everyone. I'm Bob Cassilly; this is City Museum." That story I was telling you about the space underneath the freights—so Leef and I are sitting under there with Bob, and Bob's like, "I wish we had a light." And I was like, "It's too bad we don't have a Van de Graaff machine, like The Magic House. But they already have one." And he goes, "Fuck them. They tried to sue me. Get me one!" Next day we had a Van de Graaff machine.

When Bob passed away and American Milling took over, we started buying all that contemporary art. I went out to Lisa Melandri at the Contemporary Art Museum and said, "Hey man, we're buying art—not to step on your toes. We're just trying to add something. You can borrow all of this anytime if you want.” So we really tried to do more in the community.

We built a strong L-G-B-Q-T community. That is probably my proudest thing we ever built here. The Gay Pride Prom is my favorite thing because the next day you have all these hates, all these emails being like, "Why do you do this?" And you just get to say, "Fuck you, never go back." That was great. That community was very strong. And internally, City Museum was a family. Housekeepers knew, "That's Mrs. Rick." Or if floor staff didn't have enough people, housekeeping food members would jump in. Everybody just wanted to keep the place running. 

Now, with Premier Parks, it's a little bit different. We still do community activities, but we gotta focus a lot more on our area. Where we didn't really care what the project was and just wanted to be involved, Eric, who is the GM now, has to talk about downtown partnerships, bigger picture items.

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Danya:

You mentioned the contemporary art collection. How do you curate works for City Museum?

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Rick Erwin:

Usually it has to be funny. The rules with Dave are that it has to be fun and that he cannot do it, which has ruined a lot of art. We have a budget big enough to buy a Takashi Murakami or Keith Haring piece, but if he could do those kind of doodles, I couldn't buy it. I tried to buy a few of Ai Weiwei's pieces, and Dave was like, "That's just a chair." I'm like, "It's not just a chair!"

I had a friend when I was in grad school, and he is the director of a museum in Chicago now, so we both look and come up with ideas, and then I present. I knew I wanted an Erwin Wurm piece, the big dancing sausage. That one was really just, "Hey kids, which one do you like?" The Kaws pieces were picked out by my nieces. Do Ho Suh I had seen. It's just things that I think are cool, and I also need to think about it as a market. I want Dave to make money in the long term.

Now we focus mostly on architecture. There's a guy in Chicago named Tim Samuelson. He was the cultural historian of Chicago. He knows everything about it. We bought his personal collection, so that's where we got all the one of a kind stuff. We are slowly building that up, and that will go into Dave's trust, which can then be used at different museums. On the architecture side, it's about keeping a collection that someone has put together. And on the art side it's just what we can get that's fun.

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Danya:

I was looking for any kind of academic scholarship on City Museum, and one paper from 2018 I found praised the museum for facilitating knowledge production through open interaction and play but was critical of the contemporary art collection. One point of criticism was that at least at the time, the collection was mostly limited to artists who were white men from the Western Hemisphere.

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Rick Erwin:

Yes, because they didn't check out who Pae White was, a young Asian woman. They didn't know the collection. We also had two or three pieces that were European. All the murals on the walls are local artists. Stan, Justin, Noah, who passed away. And then they also didn't know about all of the other pieces throughout the museum. We are very much making sure we have everybody covered.

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Danya:

So you are making an intentional effort to make the collection more inclusive?

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Rick Erwin:

No. When you buy art, you're literally buying what you love. You have to stay with it. And you have to see what's available. You could want an Abramovic piece or a Sophie Calle piece—beautiful photography. But if I can't get one, I can't put one in. I could get a Pae White piece. The reason we got the Thomas Heatherwick chair is because there are only six produced of each style, and one came to auction. So you have to buy right then. Do Ho Suh, that's an open edition. The Tony Cragg we picked because it was made out of metal. Every piece is individually made and welded on there. The Dustin Yellin pieces are the ones with the glass. Dustin was just coming big, so we got in early. And there was so much to look at. Pae White's piece, I would do Pae White all day long. I just love her. The colors are fun when she does the steps and everything.

What else do we try to buy? The newest piece is by a guy that does awesome butterflies. They're super cool. It's a big one downstairs right now. He just did an entire roof of butterflies. And then a few years ago, we started doing Black History Month, so I would buy a piece during that to put in our collection. They didn't buy one last year, but I bought the Three Afros, which was a rug made by a lady. It's pretty, it's up in the collection now. The fnnch pieces are just because fnnch is a friend. Hebru Brantley, African American. I got that piece out of Belgium, and it was a good deal; it was one of his first. 

It's just what people you want, and then it's what Dave is willing to buy. He doesn't care who it's from, it just has to be something that fits. Matthew Marks Gallery has a lady named Katharina. She does these huge rats, and you stand in a room with them. They wouldn't sell it to us. We tried forever to get those pieces, but they wouldn't deal with us. We weren't a big enough buyer.

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Danya:

Do you ever consider interactive or more immersive work for the collection?

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Rick Erwin:

We had looked at TeamLab, very big in Japan. They're probably the coolest immersive museum in the world. They used to have digital projections. I loved it. Dave couldn't wrap his head around why he was buying a TV.

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Danya:

On the architectural collection side, can you talk about your Louis Sullivan collection at the museum?

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Rick Erwin:

Another great story. After Bob's death, we bought nine semi-loads of terracotta from Hammond, Indiana. And we traded two pieces of terracotta for a Chicago Stock Exchange cornice that was on loan from St. Ignatius in Chicago. Neither Dave nor I were involved; it was Bruce Gerrie at the time. Bruce made the deal but gave them the shittiest pieces of terracotta you could ever find.

Father Rowe in Chicago was a collector, top of the line. He sends me this letter damning Dave Jump and me to hell, so we're like, we should go figure this out. So we go to Chicago and we're meeting with Father Rowe. And while we are there, Father Rowe sells us a Carson Pirie Scott baluster, and it just spiraled from there. We just kept buying. To the point where around 2016, Chicago Botanic Garden calls me up and goes, "Hey, we have this section of the Chicago Stock Exchange cornice we'll never use. Do you want it?" We bought it.

We just try to keep the collection together and to keep it out. It's really cool to see people when they come in and see things that would’ve been 13 floors up at eye level. It's just like Michelangelo's David in the Gallerie dell'Accademia. It's at a level that you can actually see.

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Danya:

Do you see what City Museum is doing as a form of architectural preservation?

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Rick Erwin:

Definitely.

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Danya:

How would you describe the difference between what City Museum does and what, for example, the National Building Arts Center (NBAC) does?

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Rick Erwin:

Well, they have to get their collection out in the open first, cause right now it's all in boxes. I put mine out in front of the people, where they can actually play with it and see it. That's the difference.

Larry [Giles, the founder of NBAC,] was not a fan of us. Larry and Bob, both scrappers, got in a fight. We got the front entrance from the Title Guaranty Building. Larry took that down, and then Landmarks gave it to us, and then Larry sued us for it and lost. And then Larry took down the Buder Building, and we got it, put in. The last time I spoke to Larry before he died, he was like, "You can have it if I get my Buder Building back."

Larry was very talented. He was a smart motherfucker, man. But [the latest Executive Director of NBAC] Michael Allen has moved away, so who's going to run that thing and put it all out?

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Danya:

Can you talk about what differentiates City Museum from Meow Wolf projects?

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Rick Erwin:

Sure. Meow Wolf builds in wood and plaster. We build in concrete and metal. They are story based, and we are not. And unfortunately, Premier seems to be story based in the way they think.

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Danya:

That makes sense. It's just interesting to me the way City Museum sits between those two poles.

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Rick Erwin:

That's the reason it's named City Museum. It doesn't throw us into a hole. It's ambiguous. We can be whatever we want.

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Danya:

Do you see it as one sculptural work too?

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Rick Erwin:

It's an evolving sculpture. It's constantly changing. It's activated when the guests are here. See, I don't like it when we put music in. I like it better when it's the sounds of the kids and families all yelling. Cause that's what it is. Getting Rickrolled on the third floor while you're riding the train isn't as much fun as some kids screaming.

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Danya:

Have you come across much critical scholarship on City Museum?

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Rick Erwin:

There are a few books that were written on us or we would be a part of. We've been a part of research done on public spaces. There was a book on play. There was an exhibition that travelled the country that Kurt's model for Toddler Town was in. That was a big one.

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Danya:

Do you wish that City Museum was getting even more critical attention?

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Rick Erwin:

It drives me nuts. I don't know why we're not bigger than we are. We pissed off somebody.

When Meow Wolf blew up so much, I didn't understand why. We were the real thing.

Premier also owns a park in Colorado, Elitch Gardens. And there's a Meow Wolf building right there. So I wanted to put a billboard on the side facing their building that says, "If you want to see the real thing, come see ours in St. Louis." I thought Vince and them [at Meof Wolf] would get it, find it funny. But we didn't do it.

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Ava:

Do you interact at all with the people that run Meow Wolf?

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Rick Erwin:

Every once in a while—Matt, Vince, Sean. They have new directors now. They went through three CEOs, I think. One was from Disney.

They called about slides right away when they had a slide issue. The issue was it was too tight. They ended up taking it out. I think that was at the Vegas one. Some of our staff have been approached with jobs, but it's not us.

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Danya:

What do you think is holding City Museum back from wider recognition? Do you think its location in St. Louis is a factor?

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Rick Erwin:

I definitely think it's a part of it. I love St. Louis; Bob loved St. Louis. He couldn't get out of here. And I think it's been great for St. Louis. But we are not opening up as many attractions. We looked at other locations. We looked at one in Phoenix, and I went in, and right away the ceilings were too short. They were maybe 9’ tall, and this here is 11'6".

If it was up to me, I would build one in Milwaukee. It's right outside, past four hours. Then I also would've built in Charlotte. It would've been heavy. They would've been kind of like this, but just architectural items from that area. Meow Wolf will give you a whole different story every time, but you're still going to have that big slide as you come in. You've got to have that iconic image as soon as you come in.

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Danya:

City Museum just opened the Labyrinth. What are the next steps you see for City Museum and yourself?

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Rick Erwin:

There are two more phases of the Labyrinth. We've held that idea for years. We finally got the permit in 2018, and then COVID hit. It was taking so long that we decided to open in phases. We just opened up the “hard” section, which is all metal work; it's dark. But I'm not really sure what Premier is going for. For us, it was just the 85 ft slide in the middle of it—that's the culmination of everything. You gotta find it. But they're putting in glowing dance floors, uneven floors. It's more like a funhouse to them.

But there will be phase two, which is on the west side. That will be a little bit softer. I think you're going to come from this dark space through a tight tunnel. You come through, and then it will be more like a garden. So it'll be a juxtaposition of those two. And then in the third phase, which will be more towards the museum, there are already a bunch of climbers—we just gotta figure out what we're going to do with them. One of them is a giant cast iron column that comes through the floor, and then there's a giant wheel. I have no idea what we're going to build out of it, but it's already there. We've also got a bunch of spun chairs to put in there.

So those will be the big projects. We are still always talking about finishing out the roof as we do things. I'd really like to get a lighting package on the ferris wheel. We haven't had that operating with bright lights in a while. We used to change up the lighting there and on the breezeway. So for Pride we'd have rainbows, and for the Blues we'd have that all lit up. So we'll do that again. Just trying little things. There are always ideas.

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