we are building a community archive investigating the social, cultural and environmental histories of Cementland. In 2000, the St. Louis artist Bob Cassilly, known for the City Museum, set out to convert an abandoned factory in Riverview into an adventure playground combining elements of architecture, sculpture and land art. After Cassilly’s death in 2011, the unfinished park became a dump, a wetland ecosystem and a site for urban exploration. A new owner purchased the land in 2022, accelerating the destruction of remaining artwork and leveling the landscape. With its complete erasure at hand, we want to reflect on Cementland’s impact as a de facto active public art site that drew many curious St. Louis residents over the course of its half-life.

Cementland Archive will include personal accounts, expert interviews, artifacts, artistic explorations and more. Together with the archive’s contributors, we will explore Cementland through a cross-expertise lens and unpeel its many layers of history. We hope to create an interdisciplinary research tool that could serve academic, artistic and personal projects; and offer a springboard for discussing the role of public art in our region. The collection will be hosted online and featured in a printed zine that will outline some potential directions for engaging with the archive’s materials. We intend to publish all donated materials under a Creative Commons license allowing non-commercial reuse with attribution, sharing free copies of the zine (physical or digital, depending on the volume of submissions!) with all contributors and providing hourly compensation for longform interviews.

Facilitated by Daniil Gerasimov and Liz Van Horn; editorial support from Emily Wunsch. Daniil is a graphic designer who moved to St. Louis for school 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!

Email us with submissions and questions and follow Cementland Archive on Instagram.

Funding provided by The Luminary’s Futures Fund Regranting Initiative.

The plot Cementland is located on is privately owned, and entering may be qualified as trespassing.