Groundbreaking Ceremony for Walt Disney's Kansas City Studio

Keeping the Magic Alive in Kansas City
Groundbreaking Ceremony for Walt Disney's Kansas City Studio

The official groundbreaking ceremony for Walt Disney's original Laugh-O-gram Studio Building in downtown Kansas City will take place at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, April 10 at 1127 East 31st Street, the site of the historic building. Former Kansas City Mayors Emanuel Cleaver, Richard Berkley and Charles Wheeler will be present at the ceremony. The event, which will kick off fundraising to restore the historic site where "the mouse" was born and the Disney dream began, is part of an ongoing revitalization effort in Kansas City's midtown.

The two-story brick building located at 31st and Forest Streets was the site of Walt Disney's first film studio, Laugh-O-gram, which he incorporated in 1922. The studio, operated out of five rooms and occupied by as many as eleven employees, is where Walt Disney befriended a very special mouse. Working long hours and late nights, Disney would feed the little mouse who would come out to retrieve the remains of his employees' lunches. Disney eventually trained the mouse to eat from his hand, and it would play on his drawing board while he worked. Five years later, that mouse became the inspiration for the world's most famous furry creature, Mickey Mouse.

The work Disney did in the building at 31st and Forest Streets set the pattern for his future films. He produced approximately a dozen short films there, including six one-reel cartoons based loosely on classic fairy tales and children's stories, as well as a number of live action films. The young men who worked with Disney in Kansas City became the foundation of his California film studio and pioneers of the Hollywood animation industry.

With it's collapsing roof and boarded up windows, the building which housed the Laugh-O-gram studio in midtown Kansas City hardly looks like the birthplace of the world's biggest entertainment empire. In fact, vacant for ten years, the building was slated for demolition until it was discovered by Columbia, Mo.-based Disney enthusiast Dan Viets, who partnered with a Kansas City not-for-profit group, Thank You Walt Disney, and purchased the building three years ago.

The Disney enthusiasts hope to preserve and restore the building, and establish a museum on the site. Plans for the museum include a permanent gallery of Disney artifacts, as well as a temporary exhibit room with a rotating display of artifacts loaned to the museum by Disney historians from around the world. The building will also house a re-creation of the original Laugh-O-gram Studio, space for local art students to make their own animated films, a small theater that will show films made in the studio, as well as historical and biographical films on Walt Disney's life. The museum will also host rotating lectures and films.

"The restoration is a very community-oriented project to save a historic landmark," said Viets. "We are optimistic that within a few years the important role Disney's Kansas City experiences played in his future work will be commemorated in a historic site. The site will be an asset to the culture and heritage of Kansas City."

Recently, the group received a pledge of $450,000 from the Walt Disney Family Foundation to help restore the famed cartoonist's Kansas City studio.

The Laugh-O-gram Studio groundbreaking is one of several events happening across Missouri to commemorate Walt Disney's 100th birthday on December 5, 2001. Marceline, Mo., located about 90 miles from Kansas City in north-central Missouri was the home of Walt Disney for five years beginning in 1906. On September 21-23, 2001, this small town of 2,500, located along the former Atchinson Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, will host Walt Disney's 100th Birthday Celebration -- a series of activities to commemorate Disney's 100th birthday and his formative years spent there. Many of the planned activities will be held along Marceline's Main Street, the model for "Main Street, U.S.A.," the entryway to Disneyland.

-- Posted April 9, 2001

Source: Missouri Division of Tourism Press Release