Main Street U.S.A.: the nostalgic American entrance

Main Street U.S.A. is the entrance and main street of Disneyland Park, opened on 12 April 1992. It recreates the street of a small North American town at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, inspired by Marceline, Missouri, where Walt Disney spent his childhood. The land covers the years from the 1890s to the 1920s, when the town changes with the arrival of electricity and the first motor vehicles.

At first, the Imagineers planned to replace this concept with a typical mid-twentieth-century Hollywood boulevard, thinking European visitors wouldn’t get the reference. In the end they kept Main Street, U.S.A., with even more attention to detail than the American versions. Tony Baxter, the park’s creative lead, explained the choice not to cover the whole street (as at Tokyo Disneyland) by saying the French prefer to eat outdoors. Eddie Sotto is the land’s art director.

The land has three parts: Town Square (the entrance square), Main Street itself and Central Plaza (at the foot of the Castle). The street is lined with four blocks of buildings separated by two side streets (Flower Street, Market Street). To cope with the Paris weather, two covered walkways run alongside the street: Liberty Arcade on the left, devoted to the story of the Statue of Liberty (with the Statue of Liberty Tableau, where La Marseillaise is played to honour a clause of the agreement signed with the French State), and Discovery Arcade on the right, displaying 52 original models from the US Patent Office dating from 1790 to 1907, which lead the way to Discoveryland.

The main attractions are the Disneyland Railroad station (Main Street Station), the Main Street Vehicles and the Horse-Drawn Streetcars (a horse-drawn tram). 225,000 light bulbs light up the land’s facades after dark.

About the station: a fourth train, Eureka, was added in July 1993. Its carriages are named after Californian cities (San Francisco, Los Angeles, Monterey, San Diego, Sacramento). The initials EDRR (EuroDisneyland RailRoad) can still be seen on the station’s railings.

The shops and restaurants alternate between places with a mainly male feel and places with a mainly female feel. They include Emporium (the biggest shop in the park, whose American flag has only 48 stars, as Alaska and Hawaii weren’t yet states at the time depicted), The Storybook Store, Disney Clothiers, Lilly’s Boutique (named after Walt Disney’s wife), Boardwalk Candy Palace, Bixby Brothers (Ribbons and Bows Hat Shop), Main Street Motors, Harrington’s Fine China and Porcelains and Dapper Dan’s Hair Cuts.

For food, there is Walt’s - An American Restaurant (fictionally located at 1401 Flower Street, the address of Walt Disney Imagineering, and dated 1901 in Chicago, the year and city of Walt Disney’s birth), Casey’s Corner (devoted to baseball, fictionally founded in 1888 after the poem "Casey at the Bat" by Ernest L. Thayer), Plaza Gardens Restaurant, Market House Deli, Cable Car Bake Shop and The Coffee Grinder.

Many buildings have a date on their facade, each one matching an event in the Disney family: The Storybook Store (1891, death of grandfather Kepple Elias Disney), the Fire Department building (1888, marriage of Walt’s parents and birth of his brother Herbert Arthur), Bixby Brothers (1895, the year Elias Disney became a contractor), Disney & Co (24 June 1893, birth of Roy O. Disney - the building is named the R.O.D. Building), Emporium (1892, 100 years before Euro Disneyland opened).

The first-floor windows pay tribute to dozens of Imagineers, executives and park staff in the form of fictional signs (Dr Bitz’s dental practice for Eddie Sotto, the Joe Shapiro and Stephen Juge law firm, the "La Crème de la Crème" cookery school, the Main Street Gazette credited to Marty Sklar and Tony Baxter).

A plaque in front of the Town Square bandstand reproduces the opening speech given by Michael Eisner on 12 April 1992. Another plaque marks the twinning of Disneyland Paris with the town of Dinant in Belgium since 2013.

The land is a recreation of a fictional small American town of the early twentieth century, inspired by Marceline (Missouri), Walt Disney’s hometown. Antique shops, barbershops, restaurants, horse-drawn trams and steam vehicles make up a nostalgic picture-postcard setting.

The common thread is an idealised memory: Walt Disney wanted to recreate the America of his childhood, as he had known or imagined it, as a gentle transition between the real world and the Disney world waiting at the other end of the street.

The land in numbers, pulled together from across the site for a super quick visual summary.

The land opened with the park on 12 April 1992, with Discovery Arcade and Liberty Arcade (covered galleries found only at Disneyland Paris), Disneyland Railroad Main Street Station, Main Street Vehicles and Horse-Drawn Streetcars.

The land hasn’t had a major makeover since opening day, which makes it one of the most unchanged parts of the park.

The Main Street facades also hide engraved dates that pay tribute to the history of Walt Disney and the park. To find out more: all the secrets and fun facts of Main Street U.S.A.

The land is inspired by Main Street U.S.A. at Disneyland in Anaheim (1955), Magic Kingdom in Orlando (1971) and Tokyo Disneyland (1983). The Paris version stands out for its two covered galleries (Discovery Arcade and Liberty Arcade), found nowhere else in the world, designed to keep you out of the Paris weather.