St. Louis, MO 63108
Admission is free. On-street parking with meters or city lot.
http://www.worldchesshof.org/
The Chess Hall of Fame called three cities - New Windsor (NY), Washington, DC, and Miami - its home before moving to St. Louis after closing in Miami in 2009. It opened here in September 2011 and includes both the U.S. and World Halls of Fame. Located in the Central West End of the city of St. Louis, the building houses three floors of exhibits as well as a fun gift shop.
You can't miss finding the Hall of Fame building - situated in the front yard is the world's largest chess piece. It is 14 feet 7 inches tall.
In addition one can stop on the way into the building for a game of sidewalk chess using these very large pieces on display.
The building's three floors have changing exhibits. The day of our visit the first floor exhibit was Tom Hackney: Corresponding Squares: Painting the Chess Games of Marcel Duchamp. Hackney, a contemporary British painter, created geometric abstractions based on the movements in chess games played by Duchamp (1887-1968), French artist and chess player. The two paintings below represent games played in 1928 and 1929.
The technological part of the exhibit was computer screens that explained the process of determining what color to paint where based on the moves.
It is known that Duchamp had at least one set of chess pieces that were in color. It is a lost set but was reconstructed in 2016 and a picture is on display.
Not surprising there were a number of paintings which represented the color pieces. The additional difference with these paintings was that unlike the black, white, and brown paintings that started with the first move and went to the last, with the colored paintings the contest begins with the last move and ends with the first.
The second floor exhibit was interactive and for the family. It had a $5 admission fee, though we were able to visit it for free since we are not children! The exhibit was developed in partnership with The Magic House.
From when you enter you know it is a fun place to be.
Here are more opportunities to play chess with large pieces. One can also build a castle.
And there is an opportunity to make crowns.
There are additional stations with activities.
Children - and adults - can pretend they are chess pieces.
They can also dress as kings and sit on their thrones!
The day of our visit the third floor was being prepared for a new exhibit. A peak through the door's window gave us a slight view of the World Hall of Fame.
New Hall of Fame inductees are pictured in the hallway.
Other exhibits are seen in the hallways including pictures of famous matches.
Perhaps our favorite part of the museum is the Q Boutique.
Here there are many items for sale with the chess games being the highlight. Ah, what they create with wood!
The most fascinating pieces are in this collection of different themed sets.
Cats and dogs!
Alice in Wonderland!
Robin Hood!
Sets are made from many mediums. This is an LED chess set.
These two sets are made from paper.
And my favorite is made of chocolate!
Lunch was at the delightful Mary Ann's Tea Room, about two blocks from the museum.
To get to the team room one walks through Enchanting Embellishments, a design and fashion boutique.
The tea room was built as a greenhouse in 1921. What is now the boutique was the floral shop. The tea room is an elegant and fun environment for lunch.
The food is wonderful. Three of us had combination meals, enjoying their various salads plus chicken salad croissant, onion soup, or quiche.
The Honey Smoked Salmon Salad was wonderful, too.
Comments
The chess Hall of Fame is certainly a unique museum. It is also a small museum and because one floor was changing exhibits (and thus closed) and one floor was a children's exhibit, that left really only the art exhibit for us to see. None in my group are chess players so it was not easy for us to relate to this exhibit. We did love seeing the interactive family display, though, and acting like children. We spent less than a hour at the museum.
My suggestion would be to research on their website what are the current exhibits before going to the museum. All three floors of exhibits change periodically. There are some exhibits scheduled to open soon that we would have enjoyed seeing more than the current one.
We went on a week-day afternoon and were at times the only visitors at the museum. Several staff members were present and they were friendly, knowledgeable, and informative. They were very nice about letting us visit the family area for free.
We loved the gift shop and purchased jewelry, t-shirts, pens, and other items. The chess games on sale were so fun to look at. We spent a lot of time in the boutique.
Mary Ann's Tea Room was wonderful and we all would like to return to have lunch there again. The staff was very friendly and the food was yummy. We ordered a dessert that was divine - Decadent Chocolate Mousse Torte. It looked so good that we dove into it before taking a picture. http://www.maryannstearoom.com/
We enjoyed walking through the boutique at Mary Ann's and seeing all they offered for sale.
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