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St. Louis

Marceline, where Walt’s family had owned a farm during his happiest childhood years, is located not far from the major city of St. Louis. During the decades following the civil war, the city had grown to become the fourth largest in the US. This boom period culminated with the 1904 World’s Fair and the Summer Olympics, which were hosted concurrently in St. Louis.

By the 1950s, the city's famous Mississippi riverfront was in a desperate state, having been hit by the dual effects of the Great Depression and migration to outlying suburbs. The condition of the riverfront did not go unnoticed by city authorities. In the 1930s, the city began the acquisition and demolition of a 40-block area, on which it planned to install a memorial to Thomas Jefferson. After the war, Eero Saarinen won a competition to produce a design for the memorial, with what would ultimately become the Gateway Arch. Plans were also put in place to demolish the city’s Chinatown, and replace it with a new stadium for the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team.

Gateway Arch

Image: Wikipedia

On a site close to both the Arch and the stadium, the Civic Center Redevelopment Corporation (CCRC) hoped to build a third attraction: Riverfront Square. Featuring a range of shops and restaurants, this would cater for the millions of tourists that were expected to visit the newly-revived area. In 1962, plans were announced for an outdoor mall stretching along a 300-foot strip. This would be themed around 19th century St. Louis, celebrating its history as a vital river gateway.

In early 1963, the CCRC approached Walt Disney with a proposal to produce a short film about the history of St. Louis to be shown in one of Riverfront Square’s theaters. Whereas he rejected most similar proposals out of hand, on this occasion Walt was intrigued - probably due to his affection for the area.

Walt himself visited St. Louis in May 1963, with the CCRC’s president, Raymond Wittcoff, leading the tour. At the time, Disney’s suggested involvement was limited to the production of a Circle-Vision movie, and possibly a second “unusual ride”, that would “have an economic potential as an amusement ride in addition to its primary transportation function” (it is likely that this would have been a version of the Ford Magical Skyway or PeopleMover systems).

Walt Disney's Riverfront Square
Concept art for Walt Disney's Riverfront Square.

Eventually, Disney's involvement grew significantly beyond this - to the point where the company was proposing to build an enormous indoor theme park on the Riverfront Square site (more on that in a future article). But, ultimately, no agreement on how the project would be financed was reached, and it was dropped altogether.

Walt Disney died in 1966, and his dream of rolling out Circle-Vision 360 across the world largely died with him.

Circle-Vision 360 today

Reflections of China

Circle-Vision 360 does still play a role at Disney's theme parks. The original theater at Disneyland may have shut down, along with others at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom, Disneyland Paris and Tokyo Disneyland. But the travelogue-style movies that Walt envisioned are a perfect fit with Epcot's World Showcase. Reflections of China and O Canada! continue to be presented in the format, playing to millions of guests every year.

Learn more about Disney's unbuilt attractions

I'm currently working on my third book, Possibilityland: The Disney Theme Parks That Could Have Been. This will include detailed descriptions of many Disney parks and attractions that were designed but never built. It will place these in the context of the overall story of Disney's theme park business, so that you can learn why they were proposed in the first place, why the projects didn't go ahead and how they influenced subsequent attractions that really did see the light of day. If you'd like to be notified when the book is released, sign up for the special newsletter.

 
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