See the railings on the steps? Those are all old rollers from factory conveyor belts. They have been painted by art students, and used as railings. You can spin them. You can also see more of the mosaic-covered floor. Back by the elevator is a live dog, he was running around, but I have no idea how he got inside, or who he belonged to. Also back behind the staircase is the entrance to the multi-aquarium room. You have to pay extra to go in there, and it takes all day just to see the rest of the place, so I always skip that.
The second floor has a restaurant that I also skip, but it smells wonderful. I have way too much to see to think about food, though, but I like to go look at the art in there. This bat is on a pillar at the back. How cool is it that he's made entirely of recycled things like zippers?
Okay, on up to the third floor, unless you want to climb up through rebar tunnels that hang over the open air space above the stairway. My 11 year old grandson decided to go that way. I took this over a railing. He was about twenty feet above the steps. Then he went down a slide, and I had to find him, since it took him all the way back to the lobby. Kids!
One thing about this place that I also love is the fact that when they reclaimed so much from old buildings as they were being destroyed, the museum actually used them in their decor. The archway in the background is the entrance to the architectural museum. Well go in there in a few minutes. 
This reclaimed horse guards the entrance to the room full of half-pipes. If you have a kid who is a skater, or does BMX biking, you know what half-pipes are. There are pipes that you can swing over on a rope, tunnels that go under them, and through the walls, and just pipes for running up and down on, or sliding. In the photo below, I'm standing about ten feet up, on top of one. Ahead of me are the metal bowls. I have no idea where they came from, but I suspect that they were parts of old tanks that held water, or maybe the domes of buildings. either way, they are now slides. My husband is 6'3", and my granddaughter is about 4 feet above him. That's my camera bag he's holding. He doesn't carry a purse. Really. ;) 
For the sake of keeping this as short as possible, since I still have the best two areas in the museum to cover on two more blog posts, I will limit the pics here, and just show a few, and tell you what they are. The third floor has the antiques section, as well as the half-pipe room.
It includes not only the insect room below, and a diorama-like area of working model trains, but the architectural section, where they have old stained glass, gargoyles, statuary, bricks, doorknobs... you name it. If it came off an old building, they tried to snag it for the museum. You'll see what I mean in the next 2 posts, since most of the last two places are made almost entirely of old building parts.
There's an area that has a lot of old side show, carnival, arcade and circus pieces. It's pretty dark, and you have to enter a doorway to get to it, kind of like you do at a circus with the haunted house. 
I wish she was in working order.
This old bank vault serves as a passageway between a room filled with the poster art in the photo below, and an open area where you find the wall made of glass bottles.
This room should be of interest to all of you fiber artists. The spools on the spindles at the bottom of the photo are busy spinning laces. You can purchase them if you choose to. they have shoe laces and key chains, that sort of thing made from the looms.I still have my two favorite areas of the museum to share with you. And have no fear- I could do ten more posts and you still would not see everything this place has to offer. Plus, they have the roof area open after April, and they are working on a new area that is supposed to be haunted woods. I'll drive back to St Louie for that one as soon as I can.
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