Historic Aircraft Restoration Musuem

14301 Creve Coeur Airport Road
Maryland Heights, MO
314-434-3368

Admission is $10.  There is free parking in a small lot. 

https://www.historicaircraftrestorationmuseum.org/ 

The museum opened about 1988.

The museum is housed in four hangers - three shown here - at the Creve Coeur Airport where there are over 300 airplanes stored by individual owners and the museum.  The museum hangers house about 60 airplanes but there are others in the collection in various stages of restoration.   

This museum's collection of airplanes is mostly the combined collections of two individuals although the museum has bought some additional aircraft and has received donations.   

When you look at the hours posted below you might think that it isn't often open however they seem very willing to lead private tours during the week in addition to their weekend hours.  We had a private tour by the director and it was excellent. 

The hangers were filled with many planes crammed in together!

A very few of the planes had a poster with information such as  this 1932 Curtiss-Wright Air Sedan. 

A number of the airplanes, but certainly not all, had explanatory signs. 

All of the airplanes were beautifully restored as you can see in these pictures below. Most of them in the first hanger were from the 20's and the 30's, the Golden Age of Flight. 

With rare exception when the body is restored so is the engine thus all but a couple of the planes are flyable.  This is a 1930 Phillips Fleet Fawn.  

Upon entering the second hanger you are immediately greeted by a beautiful red plane that you might think belongs to our baseball team.  But when you look closely you see that the cardinal bird is sitting on a propeller not a bat!  Although a St. Louis made and owned airplane of the 30's, it has no connection to our beloved Cards!   

This glider is the only hanging aircraft, hanging because the wide wingspread takes up too much room when parked on the floor.                                

Notice the wings on this plane.  They are folded so that the plane can be rolled into a barn, garage,  or small hanger.

I wish I could remember the story behind this orange Sunkist plane! Do you see where the engine was placed? 

This is a 1934 Monocoupe.  There were a number of Monocoupes in the collection. 

Not sure what this is!

This is a 1928 Timm Collegiate. It was actually flown by Charles Lindbergh to help with a promotion for his friend Timm who had first introduced Lindbergh to planes by giving him his first ride as a young'un.  

This is the oldest plane in the collection dating back to 1911.  In reality only the engine survived all these years. The majority of these planes crashed during their lifetime. 

This is a home-built plane that was donated to the museum.  It was obviously never completed making it interesting as you can see what the structure of an airplane is under the cloth or metal outer layer.

The museum has a special interest in planes made or connected to St. Louis. Most of the planes were made in Missouri, or even in St. Louis, such as this one which was then sent to Argentina to be used by their navy. 

A few planes were made overseas and have found their way to this museum. This is a Soviet 1932 Shavrov SH-2 Amphibian recovered from a Russian swamp in 1981 to be brought to this collection.  Over 700 were originally built but this is one of only three known to exist today. 

This 1941 deHavilland Dragon Rapide comes from France. 

This large 1971 Antonov AN-2 was a Soviet plane. 

The collection also includes some planes that are "Hollywood Stars" such as this 1929 KR21 which not only was in several movies it also was a World Acro Champ. In addition it was used in the second season of Gilligan's Island. 

This plane was used in The Great Waldo Pepper movie! 

I was especially interested in how different the noses of the planes were.  

1928 Timm Collegiate

1932 Monocoupe

Soviet 19323 Shavrov SH-2 Amphibian

1931 Curtiss-Wright Air Sedan

1916 Canuck

And finally a totally bare nose!

Can you imagine sitting on these seats?  Yes, they are light-weight wicker!  They were not the most secure when landing!

The pilots of the early planes certainly had a different experience than those of today. 

In addition to the aircraft in the museum there were a few hanging pictures, some ads of old, and one case of model planes. 

The airport office where you pay your entrance fee had a few printed items for sale. 

After touring the museum, we drove a few minutes into Chesterfield and had a great lunch at the Greek Restaurant Spiro's.

Spiro's Wrap with Greek Fries

Gyro and Greek Fries

Comments: We were very fortunate to have Albert Stix IV, museum director, as our guide.  His father began collecting planes in the 1950's.  In the 1980's he, another collector and a third partner bought the airport. Today the airport is owned by the widows of the two collectors, including the mother of our tour guide.

Albert is extremely knowledgeable about the airport and all of the aircraft.  The history is very interesting. I highly recommend that one contacts the museum to set up a weekday tour with Albert as their tour guide. No one in my group was particularly interested in planes but he made it fascinating with all of the stories. The tour did last longer than we expected - about 2 hours - because Albert had so much to share.  If I were to go again I would suggest up front a time length for the tour shorter than that! We were on our feet the entire time!  

This museum is obviously a labor of love. Work is continually being done to improve the collection and facilities. A new hanger will be built. In addition in the next year they will be moving perhaps most of the collection from the St. Louis Aviation Museum in Columbia, IL, (now closed) to merge with this museum. 

The museum hangers do not have heat nor air conditioning. We went on a warm August day and with the doors open it was not too bad but I would not recommend going on a day that is very hot or quite cold.  

We had excellent food at Spiro's!  And the service was very good.