Main Street USA [DLRP]

The scene is set by the flamboyant Victorian splendour of the Disneyland Hotel straddling the entrance gates, even before you pass through the turnstiles into Station Plaza. Once visitors emerge into Town Square from Main Street Station, they are in small-town America at about the turn of the 20th century (as those of us who never saw it like to imagine it might have been). It is a world of gas-lamps and horse-drawn streetcars, decorative lettering and absurdly pretty architecture, all in the colours of Italian ice cream. Each minutely detailed facade in Town Square and Main Street, U.S.A. is different, but the ornate balustrades and bargeboards, pediments and parapets seem to be in perfect scale and harmony. This is all a magnificent piece of deception by the Disney Imagineers - the top storeys are subtly graduated in size, so that the Sleeping Beauty Castle appears much farther away than it really is. All the street furniture - lamposts, letter-boxes, litter-bins, fire hydrants - have been carefully designed to suit the period.

[Please Note: Depending on your screen size, you may want to view the photos on full screen by pressing F11]

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