What happened to Liberty Street and Edison Square?

[MasterGracey]

I was recently at a local bookstore and was looking at a rather large book on Disney. Inside there was an image of an old park map dated 1958 and there were two other streets off of Main Street USA... Liberty Street and Edison Square.

I'm pretty young so I probably would have never had the opportunity to visit these parts of the Park nor do I remember ever hearing about them.. But I was wondering how long these parts of the park we open and when and why they were eventually closed. Or were they never even around and I mis-read the map wrong somehow?

I found an image of an old Disneyland map which was not exactly the same one I saw in the book, but rather similar and it shows Liberty St and Edison Square.. I highlighted the area...


and here is a current map of Disneyland Park with the Liberty St and Edison Sq sections covered up with good ol' map foliage (area where streets were is highlighted and labeled):


Does anybody know anything about these streets??

[Olympicnut]

They were never built. The area where Hall of Presidesnts is at WDW is similar to what Liberty Square was to have been.

[mrmainstreet]

Just that they wre proposed, but never built. Just like 'International Street' an offshoot from Mainstreet that zig-zagged like lombard street and around every corner would be an area themed to a different country- kinda like a minature world showcase.

Currently the map foliage, like ALL map foliage covers up cruddy looking DL backstage areas. Specifically the parade staging ground eats up alot of space.

[NWRREngineer]

I heard somewhere that due to the efforts put into the 1964 World's Fair, attention (and financial backing) were thus diverted and Disney decided not to go through with it. He was starting to work on EPCOT around that time too if memory serves...

[ni_teach]

[Cousin Orville]

Edison Square literally was distilled into the "Carousel of Progress" attraction and they caniballized the idea for the Fair.

[Cousin Orville]

The other proposed street that never happened you missed was International Street. It was going to run the length of the Main Street (same location as Edison and Liberty) complete with a Herb Ryman designed Chinatown element, but never left the drawing board.

[ModHatter]

Having only read small bits and pieces, I have wondered for a while if you would have been able to enter Tomorrowland from Edison Square. seems logical enough to me.

I found an article about Residential Street:

http://www.mickeynews.com/Columns/DisplayColumn.asp_Q_id_E_458

and more in Edison Square:

http://www.mickeynews.com/Columns/DisplayColumn.asp_Q_id_E_460

Basically, if Anaheim ever got a WestCOT, I suspect these areas would be resurrected along with the International street concept, to allow a condensed Epcot to not feel condensed, and to avoid some of the perceived problems of their Future World.

[Jspider]

I remeber that area, Jim Hill always says that it would've become Hollywoodland

but yeah it's a parade staging area

[MasterGracey]

Thanks for all the info, everybody.

I thought it might have actually been built at one point as the map I saw was dated 1958 and had Walt's dedication speech printed on it. I'm assuming they just added the sections on the map to show future development which was often the case on many park maps that were made during Walt's time.

Thanks for clearing things up - its a shame these little side streets were never built-- it would have been double (maybe even triple) the charm of Main Street!

[figment1986]

Money.... Other more important projects.. Each idea was located elsewhere in the future.. (where did edison go??)

International... Epcot world showcase....

Liberty: a new land at WDW home to the Hall of presidents.. (whihc if i remember correctly.. Lincon was only the begining of the original one... and if some a represenitive form the fair didn't see it.. lincoln would eventually have become the Hall of presidents...)

[AP2CM]

I guess they thought that building the Inn Between (Cast Cafe behind Plaza Inn) was more important than Edison Square.

[ModHatter]

well, just wanted to add this from a slightly clearer copy of the map. Here are the labels for each section, going counterclockwise.


Liberty Street:

The Colonial Shoppe

Hall of Presidents

Declaration of Independence diorama

Boston Observer print shoppe

Paul Revere's Silver Shop (no -pe?)

The Liberty Tree stands in the middle of this plaza.

Griffin's (?) Wharf (unclear if you would have been able to exit from the north side of the wharf's ship and use the alley that lets out by the baby station)

Glass Shoppe/Blacksmith (also unclear if this is accessible from the little side street halfway down Main St.)

Hills Bros. Coffee Gardens seems to finally round the corner from Liberty Street back to Main St.


Edison Square:

Diorama of Inventions

American Home Pre-Electricity

American Home -- Advent of Electricity

Contemproary Living

The Electronic Age



It's increasingly clear why Edison Square was recast as CoP. But Anaheim still doesn't have anything to compare with Liberty Street. And even WDW's American Adventure and Liberty Square combined don't have the intricate and immersive feel of the area proposed on this map.

But, there's always WestCOT...

[Jspider]

youknow the more I think about it the more this kind of addition actualy makes a bit of since

I mean you could simply plan the parade to loop through that area and go back to the hub via that route

and having a road that's parrelel to mainstreet would help with all the traffic issues taht Disneyland has (aka the parrelel road would releave a bit of traffic off mainstreet) not much room for attractions back there but a few historical displays could be put along there with a few mainsteet type stores as well (it could even crisscross with mainstreet a bit)

they could also completly rebuild the Licoln building with the Hall of Presidents and give it an entrance that's more on the Liberty Street side of things (a mock up of the liberty bell would be nifty too

[tahitian_terrace22]

High-Resolution Aerial Photo of Disneyland

http://zansstuff.com/aerialdl.html

[ModHatter]

youknow the more I think about it the more this kind of addition actualy makes a bit of since

I mean you could simply plan the parade to loop through that area and go back to the hub via that route

and having a road that's parrelel to mainstreet would help with all the traffic issues taht Disneyland has (aka the parrelel road would releave a bit of traffic off mainstreet) not much room for attractions back there but a few historical displays could be put along there with a few mainsteet type stores as well (it could even crisscross with mainstreet a bit)

they could also completly rebuild the Licoln building with the Hall of Presidents and give it an entrance that's more on the Liberty Street side of things (a mock up of the liberty bell would be nifty too

I think if they either made it an entire Liberty Street from the Baby Station to Mad Hatter, or if they made Edison Square a second entrance to Tomorrowland, it'd be great for merchandising, for adding traffic flow, etc. And I'm more than willing to get rid of the parades

Alternately, as awesome as those pics are, the darn trees get in my way. Is there a way to have the parades go clockwise through Main St. and use the side exit that the trolleys use?