Fond Memories of the Past?
The Main Streets of Victorian Reality
'I haven’t always lived in a city. When I was almost five my family moved out of Chicago and we went to Marceline, Missouri, where my father had bought a farm. I guess it must have made a deep impression on me. I can clearly remember every detail — just as if it had been yesterday. Those were the happiest days of my life.'— Walt Disney.
Marceline, Missouri: The Original Main Street U.S.A.
Main Street U.S.A. was inspired by the little town of Marceline, Missouri, where the Disney family lived between 1906 and 1910. A young boy at the time, these were formative years for Walt Disney and made a lasting impression on him. Indeed, he once said: “to tell the truth, more things of importance happened to me in Marceline than have happened since — or are likely to in the future.” However, Disney’s recollection of the Main Street of his youth was perhaps not as clear as he claimed above. The Main Street he built at Disneyland was quite different from the Main Streets of days gone by. It was too perfect. Instead, it was Main Street as it should have been, with all imperfections removed so that only a nostalgic, utopian image of the past remained. This begs the question, what were Victorian Main Streets really like? To find out, let’s take a look at Kansas Avenue in Marceline, the original Main Street U.S.A. that so endeared itself to a young Walt Disney.
Taken in 1905, the adjacent photograph depicts the street as it would have been, more or less, when the Disney family arrived in the town the following year. It doesn’t take Mickey Mouse to realise that Disneyland’s Main Street is significantly different from Disney’s boyhood home. For a start, Kansas Avenue was a modest dirt road during the family’s time there; it was not paved until 1912, after the Disney’s had left for Kansas City. As such, compared with Main Street U.S.A. where rain quickly drains off the resilient asphalt, Marceline would have been a a river of mud and horse manure during the rainy months. Then there are the buildings; whereas Main Street U.S.A.’s are narrow and densely packed (or rather, large structures with several narrow facades to create this illusion), Kansas Avenue was made up of long, ragged, and detached buildings. This uninspiring appearance extended to the roadside, which was dominated by ugly power lines due to the rapid spread of electrification, a world apart from Disney’s version that is lined with trees and complete with a bandstand.
This bleak view of Victorian reality is not unique to Marceline. Rather, it is a sweeping statement about every small town in America at the turn of the century. Many contemporary writers bemoaned the ills of Main Streets across the country. Nobel Prize winner, Sinclair Lewis, noted in his most famous work, Main Street, that the image of the idyllic American small town was an imaginary one. Detailing the fictional Main Street of Gopher Praire, Lewis gave a very real description of the stenches of Victorian reality — from the ‘reek of blood’ at the meat market to the ‘stink of stale beer’ outside the saloons. Thankfully, guests’ noses are saved from such odours in the Disney version, as more pleasant aromas of popcorn and baked goods are actively diffused onto the street via “smellitizers” — just look for the small vents beneath the windows next time you visit.
Marceline, Missouri, 1905. Missouri Historical Society.
Main Street U.S.A. at Disneyland Park.
Walt and Roy Disney return to Marceline, 1956.
Essentially, all unpleasant aspects of the Victorian past are conspicuously absent on Disney’s Main Street, from the miserable sights, to the unsavoury smells, and even the sleazy businesses that so frequently occupied it. At Disney, all the businesses have positive connotations: a cinema, an ice cream parlour, a bakery, a sweet shop, an emporium. The seedy bars and theatres, the funeral parlour, the police station, all staples of Victorian reality, are erased from this improved vision of the past. Thus, next time you’re in the parks and singing along to “I’m Walking Right Down the Middle of Main Street U.S.A.”, just remember — if you did that on a real Victorian Main Street, you’d probably get covered in horse manure!
The Fake Becomes the Original?
As with almost all of Disney’s dealings with history, Main Street U.S.A. has been criticised by academics. Amongst their numerous complaints, some of the most frequent are concerns that this fake Main Street will become the original for visitors unfamiliar with the Victorian past; that the utopian paradise encountered in Disneyland will be assumed to be akin to the Main Streets of yesteryear, and the more complex historical reality will be lost. Such claims are not completely without merit. Disney’s Main Street does simplify history somewhat. It does filter out the negatives, and it does fail to portray the complexities of life in America at the turn of the century. There is no mention of the class struggles, racial tensions, industrial action, economic depressions, mass immigration, and so on.
However, as historian Richard Snow has countered, this selective amnesia does not make Main Street U.S.A. bad history. Instead, he describes it as ‘a triumph of historical imagination…the fact that it is only part of the story does not make it a lie.’ The ideals of the small town community, Victorian optimism, and conservative values that are exemplified at the park were certainly part of this period of history. Furthermore, millions of people encounter Disney’s engaging historical construction every year, and some will be encouraged enough to take a deeper interest in history when they get home. After all, visiting Disney Parks is what set me down the path to being a historian — and Richard Snow’s for that matter. Ultimately, the “poor history” of Main Street U.S.A. is some of the best history you could ever encounter.
