Main Street U.S.A.: the park entrance full of American nostalgia

Main Street U.S.A. is the gateway and main street of Disneyland Park, which opened on April 12, 1992. It re-creates the main street of a small North American town at the turn of the twentieth century, inspired by Marceline, Missouri, where Walt Disney spent his childhood. The land spans the 1890s through the 1920s, an era when the town was changing with the arrival of electricity and the first motor vehicles.

At first, the Imagineers considered swapping this concept for a typical mid-twentieth-century Hollywood boulevard, thinking European guests wouldn’t get the reference. In the end, they kept Main Street, U.S.A. and put even more care into the details than in the American versions. Tony Baxter, the park’s creative supervisor, explained the decision not to cover the whole street, as Tokyo Disneyland did, by noting that the French like to eat outdoors. Eddie Sotto is the land’s art director.

The land has three sections: Town Square (the entrance plaza), Main Street itself, and Central Plaza (at the foot of the Castle). Four blocks of buildings line the street, divided by two side streets (Flower Street, Market Street). To deal with the Paris-area weather, two covered walkways run alongside the street: Liberty Arcade on the left, dedicated to the story of how the Statue of Liberty came to be (with the Statue of Liberty Tableau, where La Marseillaise plays to honor a clause in the agreement signed with the French government), and Discovery Arcade on the right, showing 52 original models from the US Patent Office dating from 1790 to 1907, which leads the way toward Discoveryland.

The main attractions are the Disneyland Railroad station (Main Street Station), the Main Street Vehicles, and the Horse-Drawn Streetcars (streetcars pulled by horses). When night falls, 225,000 light bulbs light up the land’s facades.

As for the station: a fourth train, Eureka, was added in July 1993, and its cars are named after California cities (San Francisco, Los Angeles, Monterey, San Diego, Sacramento). The initials EDRR (EuroDisneyland RailRoad) can still be seen on the station’s fences.

The stores and restaurants alternate between places with a more masculine feel and places with a more feminine one. Highlights include Emporium (the park’s largest store, whose American flag has only 48 stars because Alaska and Hawaii weren’t yet states in the era it depicts), 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.

Dining centers on Walt’s - An American Restaurant (set at the fictional address of 1401 Flower Street, home of Walt Disney Imagineering, and dated 1901 in Chicago, the year and city of Walt Disney’s birth), Casey’s Corner (devoted to baseball and fictionally founded in 1888, based on 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 tied to an event in the Disney family: The Storybook Store (1891, the death of grandfather Kepple Elias Disney), the Fire Department building (1888, the marriage of Walt’s parents and the birth of his brother Herbert Arthur), Bixby Brothers (1895, the year Elias Disney went into business as a contractor), Disney & Co (June 24, 1893, the birth of Roy O. Disney, which is why the building is called the R.O.D. Building), and Emporium (1892, 100 years before Euro Disneyland opened).

The upstairs windows pay tribute to dozens of Imagineers, executives, and park contributors through fictional business signs (Dr. Bitz’s dental office for Eddie Sotto, the Joe Shapiro and Stephen Juge law firm, the "La Crème de la Crème" cooking school, the Main Street Gazette credited to Marty Sklar and Tony Baxter).

A plaque in front of the Town Square bandstand carries the dedication speech Michael Eisner gave on April 12, 1992. Another plaque marks the sister-city partnership between Disneyland Paris and the town of Dinant, Belgium, since 2013.

The land is designed as a re-creation of a fictional small American town from the early twentieth century, inspired by Marceline (Missouri), Walt Disney’s hometown. Antique shops, barbershops, restaurants, horse-drawn streetcars, and steam vehicles add up to a nostalgic, picture-postcard setting.

At its core, the land is about a memory polished by time: Walt Disney set out to rebuild the America he grew up in, whether he lived it or dreamed it, so guests could ease from everyday life into the Disney world that lies at the far end of the avenue.

The land by the numbers, pulled from across the site for a quick visual summary.

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

It hasn’t gone through any major makeover since opening day, which makes it one of the most stable parts of the park.

Look closely at the buildings along Main Street: dates are carved into them as a nod to Walt Disney’s life and to the park’s past. Want to dig deeper? all the secrets and fun facts of Main Street U.S.A.

The land draws on Main Street U.S.A. at Disneyland in Anaheim (1955), Magic Kingdom in Orlando (1971), and Tokyo Disneyland (1983). What sets the Paris version apart is its two covered arcades (Discovery Arcade and Liberty Arcade), found nowhere else in the world and designed to keep guests out of the Paris weather.