The Saint Louis Science Center, founded as a planetarium in 1963, is a collection of buildings including a science museum and planetarium in St. Louis, Missouri, on the southeastern corner of Forest Park. With over 750 exhibits in a complex of over , it is among the largest of its type in the United States. James S. McDonnell Planetarium Funding for the first structure of the current campus began in 1955, with $1 million of a $110 million city bond issue specified for the construction of a planetarium. Two years were spent surveying locations. The first proposed site, on the northern side of Forest Park near the Jefferson Memorial Building at Lindell and DeBaliviere, was scrapped because of restrictions on subdivisions. The location was changed to the southern part of the park, on the site of the old mounted police station, which was demolished in 1960. The plan was to build a planetarium, science museum, and natural history museum. The Planetarium was designed by Gyo Obata of Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum with a unique shape (Obata was later tasked in the 1970s with designing the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.). Architectural Forum magazine described it as, "Looking like some strange craft spun down to earth from outer space... St. Louis's new planetarium perches gracefully on a rise in ... Forest Park". James Smith McDonnell (1899–1980), an aviation pioneer and co-founder of St. Louis-based McDonnell Douglas, an aerospace manufacturer, donated $200,000 for equipment such as the star projector. The facility was named after him in 1964. The McDonnell Planetarium is home to a ZEISS UNIVERSARIUM Mark IX Star Projector. Installed in 2001, this machine is one of only three in the United States and thirteen in the world. The unusual request for an "open" planetarium theater called of the extremely bright stellar projections, a challenge outstandingly mastered by ZEISS fiber-optic projectors. Science Center In 1972, the Museum of Science and Natural History, located in Oak Knoll Park in the St. Louis suburb of Clayton, began to receive funds from sales tax through the Metropolitan Zoological Park and Museum District. In 1983, the museum purchased the Planetarium from the city, and closed it for remodeling. On July 20, 1978, the Planetarium reopened as the Saint Louis Science Center. On November 2, 1991, as part of a $34 million expansion, a new building opened across from the Planetarium south