Cass Gilbert designed the St. Louis Art Museum as the Palace of Fine Arts, one of the few 1904 World's Fair buildings meant to be permanent. Cass Gilbert — the same architect who later designed the United States Supreme Court building and the Woolworth Building in New York — created this Beaux-Arts palace atop Art Hill as the fair's Palace of Fine Arts. When the fair ended, the building became the permanent home of the St. Louis Art Museum, which has been free to the public since 1907 — a point of genuine civic pride.
The collection spans 5,000 years and includes ancient Egyptian artifacts, pre-Columbian art, European masters, and a particularly strong collection of German Expressionist paintings, accumulated partly because St. Louis's large German-American community maintained cultural connections to Germany through the early 20th century. The museum's position atop Art Hill is theatrical: wide steps lead up from the Grand Basin, the reflecting pool where the fair's lagoon once shimmered. In winter, Art Hill becomes the city's most beloved sledding spot, the steps packed with children and their parents.
The museum overlooks it all, patient and permanent, as it has for more than a century. Admission is free. Go in.