Two Nice Randos
I have two nice and unusual photos for you for this Friday. I hope you like them!
This first example is from July, 1970; it's a nice image of the waterfalls that used to flow beneath the Monsanto House of the Future. That house was removed in December of 1967, so it'd only been gone for about a year and a half at this point. I'm not sure if there were ever any plans to replace the HoF with another attraction, but in the meantime, they left the beautiful manicured gardens and ponds as the Alpine Gardens. It became Triton's Garden in 1996, and then Pixie Hollow in 2008.
Next is this atypical photo from the 1950s, taken from the top level of an Omnibus. A young girl in a coat of many colors glances back at us ("Look at the camera, Mary! Look at the camera!") with Main Street in front of us. A firetruck is at the bottom of the frame, I thought it was the Chemical Wagon and not the Motorized Firetruck. Then again, I don't see any horses pulling it, so... hmmm. A Horse Drawn Streetcar heads toward us, and the castle is in the misty distance (hey, I knew a girl named Misty Distance!).
EXTRA! EXTRA!
GDB Friend Chris Merritt will be giving a presentation about the 1964 New York World's Fair at the Disneyland Hotel Anaheim Hotel (thank you Sue for catching my dopey mistake!) on Friday, February 2nd. Tickets are $25 - you might see me there if you go! (Just look for the dorkiest person, and BINGO). Here's a link with all of the info you will need:
9 comments:
I like those cantilevered waterfalls. They were a perfect accompaniment to the HotF. Here, they look sort of out of place without the Plastic House to give them purpose. Still a beautiful scene though.
Wow, the air looks really chewy in the second pic. Smog? Or fog? Probably some of both. It makes the Castle look far away, even though it's fairly close. Maybe the horses are pulling that fire truck, Major. Early on, Walt experimented with using nano horses; no bigger than a house cat. Discontinued when Screechy the Richfield eagle carried them off to its nest to feed its young. More of those "hard facts".
More randos? We just had randos a few days ago! I can still taste them!... kidding. I like randos; they can be anything! Thanks, Major.
That’s a nice picture of falling water (not to be confused with Fallingwater, which I’m sure inspired it in no small part).
On an initial glance, I thought that might be a Dalek out in the middle of the street in the second picture, but on closer inspection it appears to actually be a stroller. There’s another one to the right of that. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be in Disneyland with two stroller-aged kids. We did it at WDW, but Disneyland doesn’t have the same amount of space to move around in.
Looking at a friend’s recent vacation pictures a few days ago, it finally hit me as to why the scale on the castle looks off in modern pictures but not in vintage photos - the eucalyptus trees behind it grew. One of those weird things that’s right in front of you and you just don’t see until you see it. It probably took me so long to notice because trees have no scale.
Thanks for a great start to a rando weekend!
Definitely the Chemical Wagon. The frame around the bell (no frame on the motorized fire truck), different size and shape bell than the fire truck, and the brass finials on either side all give it away--invisible horse notwithstanding.
In more-recent pictures of the Chemical Wagon, the bell is missing; the frame stands empty. Wonder whose collection that bell belongs to?
In the 1960’s, architects all assumed that private homes would be built over waterfalls, which would provide fire protection, domestic water supply, and a measure of acoustic isolation. Later, a waterfall shortage caused this concept to be abandoned. Hard Facts indeed.
Is the blank wall behind the CirCARama building (later to be buzz lightyear)?
I can count up to three of the plain green trash cans in the Main Street photo, might be more. Photo is probably 1957 or earlier.
I think I can explain the missing Chemical Wagon horses. They are backstage taking their art lessons, so they can be as skilled as the street car horses, who draw their street car up and down Main Street every day. Horses that became expert sketch artists could graduate to drawing caricatures, and eventually to becoming animators for the studios. In this way, Disney created an internal talent pool for their film production and provided a path to professionalism for their equine staff. Some of these horses offspring may be in studio management today.
Thanks Major!
JG
JB, I agree, the waterfalls look nice, though I can’t help missing the HotF (like you). I’m guessing that the air was more misty than smoggy in that second photo, but after all, fog is part of smog. It looks like morning to me, maybe it warmed up and cleared up as the day progressed. The Chemical Wagon horses were pretty tiny, so they really could be there, just blocked. Nano horses… now that’s an interesting idea. And you never know when Randos are gonna happen!
Chuck, I would love to know if Fallingwater was actually an inspiration for those waterfalls! The connection seems clear, but could it also just be the fashionable thing at that time (for “fancy” houses)? I still think that’s a Dalek, but a baby one. Cute, but deadly, stay away from that toilet plunger! I saw lots of double-wide strollers a few days ago, it does look tricky, but people seemed to manage. Hmm, you can still see eucalyptus trees behind the castle? I guess I never noticed!
Steve DeGaetano, thank you - as usual, my readers are way more observant than I am. The missing bell is a weird thing - on the Columbia, people were ringing the bell as they exited the ship, and nobody seemed to mind.
JG, I would love to live in a house over waterfalls, especially if it was a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Supposedly his homes are better to look at than to live in, but it’s hard to be too critical of those incredible works of art. I do think you are right about the blank wall being the CirCARama building. You sure know a lot about the Chemical Wagon horses, and should write an extensive book about them! “Stories about the horses ‘they’ don’t want you to know!”.
Mary's all, "Mo-om! I was ogling a bunch of cute boys! They're wearing silly hats! That only adds to the cuteness!"
"They might be a barbershop quartet or something!"
I think Mary may have had enough of posing for pictures at this point in the day
Melissa, it’s as if The Osmonds were there!
Melissa, chicks dig four part harmony.
Dean Finder, I’m sure many children can identify - you see those rictus grins that show no actual joy!
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