World Chess Hall of Fame
The World Chess Hall of Fame contains the World and U.S. Halls of Fame that honor yearly inductees, and holds a vast collection of artifacts and ephemeral material related to chess players and history. Their mission is "to educate visitors, fans, players, and scholars by collecting, preserving, exhibiting, and interpreting the game of chess and its continuing cultural and artistic significance." Exhibitions explore the history of chess and its impact around the world. It is housed in what was once a historic residence in the Central West End neighborhood of St. Louis, across from the Chess Club and Scholastic Center.
History
In 1986, the United States Chess Federation created the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame as a small museum in the basement of their headquarters in New York. Their collections moved across the East Coast, growing in size and scope until Jeanne and Rex Sinquefield provided the funds to move the collection to St. Louis. It reopened September 9, 2011 in its current location as the World Chess Hall of Fame.
The building is known for the huge chess piece displayed in front of it. It is a large-scale replica of a "Championship Staunton" king piece, measuring at 20 feet tall and 9 feet 2 inches in diameter and 53 times larger than the original piece, and weighing almost 11,000 pounds. It was deemed the largest in the world by the Guiness Book of World Records in 2018. The piece it was modeled after was designed for use in the first Sinquefield Cup, the first ever Super Grandmaster tournament to be held in Saint Louis. The 2014 Sinquefield Cup was the highest-ever rated chess tournament in the game's history.
References
M, Ben and John Baldwin. (2019) World Chess Hall of Fame. Clio: Your Guide to History. https://www.theclio.com/entry/40082