This is not to say Cassilly's career was without controversy. The City Museum became so notorious for inspiring lawsuits among people who claimed they had been injured on site that eventually someone put a notice on its ticket booth informing visitors that they entered at their own risk.
"Bob was concerned kids were too sheltered," explains DeFilippo. "He didn't care if somebody fell. He cared if they didn't try."
Cassilly's commitment to preserving his artistic vision extended to other people's art as well. Back in 1972, on his honeymoon in Rome with his first wife, in St. Peter's Basilica, Cassilly encountered what he later described a hammer-wielding maniac (he was actually a Hungarian geologist) attacking Michaelangelo's Pietà with a chisel.
"I leaped up and grabbed the guy by the beard," Cassilly later told People magazine. "We both fell into the crowd of screaming Italians. It was something of a scene."
Cassilly was not above making scenes on his own turf. A few years later, he and his friend Bruce Gerrie (now the curator of the City Museum's architectural museum-within-a-museum) determined that they would save one of the spires of the soon-to-be-demolished St. Henry's Church in the Gate District. They spent a great deal of money tuckpointing the outside of the tower and restoring the masonry so it could stand on its own as a monument to the neighborhood.
"One day," Tucker remembers, "I was at a funeral and my phone rings. I look down and it's Bob. And then it's Bruce. And then it's Bob again. After the service, I called them back. They said the demolition contractor had come to tear down the tower. They parked Bruce's Jeep at the foot of the tower so the [wrecking] ball couldn't get in. The police came, and Bob called the police on the police. They took Bob and Bruce off to jail."
The tower eventually came down, but that, says Tucker, isn't the point. The point is the lengths to which Cassilly would go in order to protect something he considered important.
Many believe that Cementland, which Cassilly had been working on for more than a decade, was destined to be his masterpiece.
"If you quote me on this, I'll deny it," warns DeFilippo, "but I think Bob was a reincarnation of the Mound Builders. He had dump trucks bring 80,000 pounds of earth out there. He wanted to build the highest spot on the Mississippi River. He built pyramids and mountains out there. And a waterslide."
The fate of Cementland is uncertain. "I don't know if anyone else will have the vision to complete it," says Streeter.
But even if Cementland never opens, Cassilly's legacy will remain in St. Louis for a long time. Cassilly told his employees that he wanted the City Museum to continue its operations uninterrupted.
"I still think of him the present tense," says DeFilippo. "I know lots of other people will, too. He left so much that's unique, unique to Bob."
Adds Tucker: "His special genius was that he could see things and think larger than anyone else. It was great being around him. He made you see that reality was far bigger than you imagined."
