The Saint Louis Art Museum: The Palace That Stayed

In nineteen-oh-four, Saint Louis hosted the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, a world's fair so large it covered twelve hundred acres of Forest Park and drew millions of visitors from around the globe. The fair also popularized the ice cream cone and hosted the first Olympic Games held on American soil. And when it was all over, almost every building it had raised was torn down.

Almost every one.

Organizers had always planned to make two structures permanent. One was the Flight Cage, which became part of the Saint Louis Zoo. The other was the Palace of Fine Arts, the crown jewel of the exposition's cultural program, designed by architect Cass Gilbert in a grand Beaux-Arts style that put classical columns, ornamental sculpture, and a monumental facade in the heart of Forest Park. It is the only permanent exhibition building that survives from the nineteen-oh-four World's Fair.

Today it is the Saint Louis Art Museum, and its collection has grown to more than thirty thousand works spanning virtually every culture and time period. The museum is particularly strong in twentieth-century German painting, pre-Columbian art, Oceanic material, and ancient Egyptian artifacts. Its Egyptian mummies and sarcophagi draw visitors who may not otherwise think of Saint Louis as a destination for antiquities.

The building itself remains one of the finest examples of Beaux-Arts public architecture in the country. Sculptural figures span the north entrance. Gilbert designed it to outlast the fair, and it has, by more than a century now, standing in a park that was temporarily a city and has since returned to trees and paths and the slow accumulation of time.