Walt Disney’s Riverfront Square That Never Was
Date Posted: July 27, 2018
Posted In: Ideas,
From Mouse Planet: In December 2015, the only known existing copy of the blueprints for Walt Disney’s Riverfront Square project in St. Louis sold for $27,000, after the auction house predicted a price of between $5,000-$7,000. Those plans are now in the hands of a private collector and unavailable to researchers.
What was Walt Disney’s Riverfront Square?
Walt Disney grew up in Missouri in the cities of Marceline and Kansas City. Even though he was born in Chicago, Illinois, he considered Missouri his home.
In 1945, he wrote, “I feel that my roots are in the great state of Missouri and that I am a Missourian in every sense of the word, even to the ‘Show Me’ tradition. Missouri typifies good, common sense Americanism, whether your roots are in the farm or in the streets of its bustling cities. I guess you can gather from this that I still have a fine warm spot for the old home state.”
The city of St. Louis had been founded in 1764 and in the early 1960s, plans were made to celebrate its upcoming bicentennial with the building of the Gateway Arch (opened October 1965) and the multipurpose Busch Memorial Stadium (opened May 1966).
Part of the planning for the stadium included setting aside some land just a few blocks to the north to be called Riverfront Square, an outdoor mall about 300-feet long, that would be developed with theaters, restaurants, and stores with all automobile traffic excluded.
One of the theaters would have been in the shape of a steamboat and be called the Gilded Cage and show old silent movies during the day and some evenings live melodrama performances. The entire mall facing the Mississippi River would have featured 19th century architecture glorifying the age when St. Louis was a popular river port.
In 1963, business and civic leaders approached Walt with the proposal that he produce a film to honor the city’s history as part of the celebration as well as part travelog of the city as it was today. The intention was to build 1,000-seat modified Circle Vision theater where Walt’s 15-minute film would run continuously.
Besides the America the Beautiful Circle Vision film (originally produced for the American pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair) at Disneyland, Walt produced Italia ’61 sponsored by Fiat for the Italia ’61 Exposition in Turin, and was in discussion for doing other possible Circlevision films including one at Niagara Falls. At the time, a Circle Vision film could cost more than $2 million to produce.
Although he considered the proposal for a few weeks, Walt wasn’t enthused about the idea but he was intrigued by the land that had been set aside especially since he had become deeply interested in city planning at the time. He talked with Raymond Witcoof, president of Downtown St. Louis Inc., a group of businessmen who were involved with the downtown development.
The CCRC (Civic Center Redevelopment Corporation) invited Walt to be a consultant on the project. Walt and his brother Roy met with some of members at the Disney Studio in Burbank on March 28, 1963.