Disneyland's Main Street, USA, and Its Sources in Hollywood, USA

Much critical commentary has been devoted to examining Disneyland's Main Street, USA, a picturesque streetscape built in the style of American commercial architecture of the years 1890-1910 (the park opened on July 17, 1955; Figure 1). In particular, the search by historians and cultural critics for sources of inspiration has led to earlier amusement parks and fairs, as well as specific towns, from Fort Collins, Colorado, to Marceline, Missouri, Walt Disney's boyhood home. The result of such analysis, however, has been an overemphasis on the autobiographical aspect of Main Street as a replica of Marceline's principal thoroughfare. Simultaneously, another mode of interpretation has regarded Main Street as a "movie set" in the limited sense of an imaginary world scripted like a movie or TV show in which the visitor is an actor. It may be useful at this point in the discourse to recall that Main Street was a uniquely American symbol that Disney shared but did not invent, and that the idea of Main Street was widespread in literature, the theater, and film in the years before Disneyland's creation. Indeed, its representation in the movies produced on Disney's turf in "Hollywood, USA," as part of the genre of the small-town film of the 1930s and 1940s, offers a new avenue of inquiry. Consideration of how Main Street functions in long shot, close-up, and social context in several representative movies from these years helps to illuminate the design choices made by Disney's artists. In addition, a detailed look at the typical Hollywood back lot reveals various visual tricks borrowed by the designers of Main Street from the repertoire of set-design techniques. Finally, an investigation of four fully realized street sets built on Hollywood back lots in the years preceding Disney's theme-park street provides a new framework for understanding it. Disneyland's Main Street deserves on-going analysis because of its perceived status as "one of the most successfully designed streetscapes in human history" and its extraordinary impact on urban planning and the preservation movement over the last half century (Francaviglia, "Main Street USA" 148). Its situation and function as the pathway into what is generally regarded as the first theme park is remarkable. Visitors arriving from the main gate during the initial year of operation walked under the Victorian station of the Santa Fe and Disneyland Railroad and entered the Town Square flanked on the west side by the Police Station, Town Hall, Fire Station, and Bekins Van and Storage, and on the east by the Bank of America, Town Square Realty, the Opera House, and Maxwell House Coffee House. The square merges with an axial corridor bordered by replicas of smalltown American commercial buildings and broken into two blocks by an intersection, Center Street, comprising short blocks on either side. Most of the early shops were operated by outside lessees and sponsors, thus providing much-needed funding for the park (Mason 17-18). The buildings on the west side, starting at Town Square, originally housed in sequence the following: the Emporium, Crystal Arcade, Upjohn Pharmacy, Carnation Ice Cream Parlor, Sunnyview Farms, Puffin Bake Shop, Penny Arcade, Candy Palace, and Coca Cola Refreshment Corner (Figure 2). On the east side stood: the Wurlizter Music Hall, Wonderland Music Company, Fine Tabacco, Main Street Cinema, Jewelry Store, Yale and Towne Lock Shop, Swift Market House, Gibson Greeting Card Shop, Ellen's Gift Shop, Blue Bird Shoes, Kodak Camera Center, Timex Clock Shop, Grandma's Baby Shop, Intimate Apparel, Ruggles China and Glass, and the (fictive) Plaza hotel and Apartments (Janzen 2633; Koenig 32-39). The resulting community of businesses was surprisingly akin to a real Main Street. The merchants, in cooperation with WED (the Disneyland design organization), strove to create a vintage atmosphere on the interiors. For example, the Upjohn Pharmacy was a veritable museum, allotting minimal space to the company's current products (Figure 3). …