In 1955 one of Walt Disney’s greatest dreams came true when he opened Disneyland to the world. It quickly became a huge success and Walt immediately began planning new additions to his park. As he said, “It's something that will never be finished, something that I can keep developing and adding to”.

The area behind the eastern, right hand side (facing the castle) of Main Street USA was initially being used as a lumberyard and was a prime target for any expansion. Walt and his Imagineers quickly settled on turning it into a residential area to compliment Main Street’s commercial theming, and came up with the idea of a second street running parallel to Main Street USA.

The initial location of what was at first being referred to as Market Street or simply Residential Street is clearly visible on this detail from a 1956 map. You can see Main Street station marked as 14 at the bottom right of the picture, and the horse-drawn carriage going up Main Street? The little row of houses through the arch is the planned second street.

The small dusty street was at first going to lead up to a dilapidated ‘haunted house’ sitting at the top of a hill. However Walt didn’t like the thought of a building looking so run-down in his beautiful park, so the idea of the spook house was abandoned, but it eventually return….

The street had a more fully developed incarnation as International Street, which would have included a very special Chinese restaurant. As well as having a live singing group supported by audio animatronic singing birds, the restaurant would have featured a talking dragon built into the walls. He would act as M.C and introduce an animatronic wise-cracking Confucius figure, voiced by the Golden Horseshoe Review’s legendary Pecos Bill himself, Wally Boag. Unfortunately the human robotic Confucius simply wasn’t of good enough quality to hold the show, but the singing animatronic birds worked fine. I guess you can work out where they ended up.

At one time there was an entire Chinatown designed around the restaurant. Then again, other plans show the Chinese restaurant as part of International Street, which was to have included many little lanes with architecture based on areas of Denmark, Italy, Japan, Switzerland, France, Germany and Spain. They would have shops, restaurants and live music to indicate a flavour of the country in question.

A board was displayed in the Hub between Main Street and Tomorrowland stating that International Street would be opening here in 1956. Then the date on the sign changed to ’57 and ’58, but no construction work ever seemed to begin.

Of course the International Street idea was later revised and, on a much larger scale, became EPCOT’s World Showcase.

The version of the second street that probably came closest to being constructed was called Liberty Street. This would have featured wax figures of Presidents and inventors in a show called One Nation Under God, and displays featuring the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Statue of Liberty and the Liberty Bell. Also, away at the end of the street, there would have once again been a haunted house. Sound familiar? Much of the concept survived to become Liberty Square at Walt Disney World.

Plans for these streets were all abandoned, but the idea of an lane running parallel to Main Street finally came to life, after a fashion, at Disneyland Paris. They have covered arcades stretching behind the stores on both sides of Main Street. Believe me, it’s a great way of avoiding the crowds! And in one of these arcades is a tableau of the building and delivery of the Statue of Liberty, just as was planned for Disneyland back in the 1950’s.

As we’ve already seen, and will continue to see time and time again in this series, Disney never fully rejects an idea; they’re just stored away for possible later use. And we’ll find a classic example of that next time in “The Other Side Of Main Street, USA, Part 2 - Edison Square”