Unique Things To Do Around St. Louis

An Overview of St. Louis

St. Louis is a major city situated along the Mississippi River, home to the iconic Gateway Arch honoring the explorers and pioneers which allowed the United States to expand westward. The city itself has a distinct series of cultures, with barbecue restaurants, blues music venues, quiet waterholes and Midwestern influences. As a unique nexus of trade and historic movement West, there are many unique things to do around St. Louis.

Unique Things To Do Around St. Louis

City Museum

This is a strange, wonderful playground museum made of alternating architecture, tacky displays, playground artwork, decommissioned fighter panes and open-air scaffolding. Visitors can wander within, climbing and interacting with the various art-structure exhibits.

Monks Mound

Native American civilizations created enormous mound cities on the plains by hand to create defensible positions with wide vantage points.  Monks Mound is the largest of these earthwork structures and the largest artificial building north of Mesoamerica. The Mound was created by hand-carrying buckets of dirt to contribute to it’s construction. Monks Mound was part of a much larger complex of mounds known as Cahokia, the largest trade nexus north of Mexico with over 100 earthen mounds. Most of these mounds exist in the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site.

Cotton Belt Freight Depot

This is an enormous loading zone near decommissioned railroads. This half-ruined building found second life as an urban art zone with splashes of intense colors decorating the length of the building.

The Mural Mile

This is a long series of riverside walks displaying various iterations of Missouri’s Urban Artworks.

Citygarden Sculpture Park

Located just down the street from the capitol building is a wide walking area filled with upscale cafés and numerous modern sculptures, including the mildly famous Erros Bandato.

Venice Café

This is a popular cash-only bar and eatery with notoriously interesting mosaics covering every surface.  

The Shaved Duck Smokehouse

The Shaved Duck Smokehouse is an extremely popular BBQ eatery serving southern-styled specialties.

The Mud House

This is a cozy café and pastry shop located on the south side of St. Louis.

Pulitzer Arts Foundation

The Pulitzer Arts Foundation is an art museum which showcases a wide range of ancient and modern artworks from regions across the world.  The exhibits, which change frequently, change between showing ancient indigionous sculptures to Egyptian paintings, to modern Chinese architecture to post-modernism digital pieces.  Visiting the foundation is one of the most unique things to do in St. Louis.

National Blues Museum

This is an incredible museum which showcases one of St Louis’ main cultural exports: Iconic Blues music.  The Museum hosts regular performances which require tickets in advance.

Miniature Museum of Greater St. Louis

This is a popular and tiny museum filled with high quality, excellently detailed miniatures.  

Tower Grove Park

This park is ideal for various photos.  It famously has some fake tower ruins around ponds and lakes in the garden area which are pretty and interesting.  

St. Louis Arch

The famed piece of architecture known as the “Gateway to the West” was constructed to honor many aspects of American History, including President Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase, the Lewis and Clark Expedition and the countless pioneers, settlers and explorers who made United States expansion possible.

St. Louis Zoo and Turtle Park

The St. Louis Zoo is a famously excellent zoo, made more appealing through free entry and numerous animal rescue programs.  The zoo grounds are also home to the 1904 World Fair’s Flight Cage, which is now a thriving aviary.  There is also a somewhat famous miniture playground nearby, which uses the back of a giant cement turtle as its centerpiece.

World Chess Hall of Fame

Accented by an enormous chess piece outside and smaller-but-still-giant chess set out front, this museum is home to a mass of novelty chess boards and exhibits. The museum showcases historical and pop culture figures all revolving around the most famous strategic game on Earth.

The Awakening

The Awakening is a very strange drive-by sculpture.  An enormous giant is seen emerging with a screaming mouth from the ground, its hands clawing towards the heavens.  

Endangered Wolf Center

Located to the South-West of St. Louis, this center fosters native wolf populations in their natural habitats.  Visitors can walk through the area and occasional glimpse wolves moving through woods.

Big Joel’s Safari and Petting Zoo Educational Park

This drive-through safari is a sanctuary for numerous free-roaming animals.  The park offers excellent sights and the chance to get close to the more docile creatures of Earth.

Pecan Legacy Park

This tree park is filled with a special type of soil known as Gumbo Flats, which fosters Pecan trees especially well. After several pecan trees survived an enormous flood, including the original monarch tree, this patch of land was registered as a protected zone.  Barring any more calamities, these producing trees will continue to thrive for several hundred more years.

Grant’s Farm

Originally stewarded by US president Grant, this property includes Grants Cabin and a wide variety of protected and imported animals.  Entry to the park is free, but there’s a 12 dollar parking fee.  Bikes can enter without any charge at all.

Missouri Botanical Garden

This massive garden is one of the most beautiful in the Midwest, with numerous plants, walking trails and a series of excellent contemporary sculptures worked into displays.

Laumeier Sculpture Park

The Laumeier Sculpture Park is a bizarre park with numerous odd and twisty sculptures all situated outdoors. There are over 60 sculptures, accessible by walking a 1.4-mile trail.

Fort Belle Fontaine

This incredible fort was built directly after the advent of the Louisiana Purchase.  The fort was designed as a major waystation for people heading to explore, settle and traverse the new territory.  The moderately-well preserved Fort Belle Fontaine now exists in a beautiful foliaged area.

Bevo Windmill

St. Louis has its own Holland Windmill, built by wealthy landowner Adolphus Busch, solely so he could have a place to stop on the way home from work for a pint.  

The Billiken

This statue is a supremely strange and creepy combination of a Buddha and a Goblin.  The statue was meant to serve as a model for a toy line for children, covering a similar niche of the market as the teddy bear.  The teacher of 1908 who dreamed up the minor monstrosity saw no success, but the Billiken now exists as a University Mascot.

Lemp Mansion

This is a haunted tour service which includes beer, a murder mystery theater and an old house of a long-dead beer baron.

The Wreckage of the Inaugural

This ship was once a decommissioned WWII minesweeper serving its country further as a popular museum on the waterfront.  However, a storm rushed through and dragged the ship down.  Its rusted carcass can be seen from the banks of the Mississippi. 

The Red Tower

Though it looks like a stately building, this is actually just an enormous 194 foot tall pipe decorated in pleasant, red bricks.  The pipe was designed to handle buildup from intense water pressure, allowing water levels a place to rise.  The pipe never ruptured and still stands in good condition to this day. 

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