The beginnings of a St. Louis Disney theme park now on the auction block
The blueprints for an indoor Disney theme park proposed for St. Louis in the 1960s is going on the auction block this week.
Yes, the plan before Orlando was St. Louis.
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| © Steven Liebman
Entrance to the Dream Suite at Disneyland.
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Walt Disney’s Riverfront Square in St. Louis was supposed to occupy a five-story building in downtown, according to the description in the California-based company Profiles in History as part of its “Animation and Disneyana” auction.
“I think it would have added a very interesting component to the development of the city in the ’60s,” Chris Gordon, director of library and collections for the Missouri History Museum, who has researched the project, told the Associated Press.
In March of 1963 Walt Disney met with St. Louis Mayor Raymond Tucker complete with blueprints. The plan eventually fell through. According to the auction description, Disney may have been insulted after August Busch, Jr. (a master showman who took the company with his family name and grew into a major brewing company) publicly called Disney crazy for thinking a park could succeed without selling liquor.
The park was going to contain rides which would eventually show up at Disneyland and Disney World, including Pirates of the Caribbean, the Haunted Mansion, and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.
These original blueprints consist of 9-pages measuring and may go between $5,000 to $7,000.
In the end there is alcohol being served at many Disney parks.
