Join Eric for a trip report of his exploration of the Walt Disney Birthplace in Chicago. Uncover the humble beginnings of the Disney legacy as he delves into the historical significance of the home where Walt and Roy Disney were born. He visited during Open House Chicago and during the Disney 100 years of Wonder anniversary of the Walt Disney Company when the birthplace opens its doors to the public for the first time. Also learn the story behind the O-zell Soda brand, intricately tied to the Disney family's history.
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Websites for the Walt Disney Birthplace
Restoration Project:https://www.thewaltdisneybirthplace.org/
O-zell: https://www.o-zell.com/ Open House Chicago: https://openhousechicago.org/sites/site/walt-disney-house-birthplace/
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00:04 --> 00:07 Synergy Loves Company.
00:10 --> 00:53 We have this coterie of rich franchises. The company now that people want to engage with. I came here to try and continue what Walt Disney and his associates set in motion 50 years ago, which is to experiment with every new and innovative kind of entertainment possible. It's what we hope to do here to really develop something that just, more than an entertainment enterprise, it's something that contributes many other ways.
01:00 --> 24:11 Hey, this is Synergy Loves Company, where we explore how Disney connects to everything. I'm Eric H. Synergy, and thank you so much for taking the time out of your day today to listen. I'm so grateful that you're joining me today and keeping me company, and I hope you get something out of this episode. This episode is a little different, and I'm excited to share this story with you today. A few weeks ago, I got a text from my wife. I'm a librarian in a school, so I can't really answer my phone or answer my text, but I do read them on my watch as they popped out. And when I read this text, I instantly freaked out. I kind of fanboyed out. I'm not going to lie. The message was that the Walt Disney birthplace home would be open to the public for the first time in ever. Right in Chicago, not too far from where I was standing when I got the message. In kind of an ironic twist, I was working with a class on an imagineering themed research project, and I had just been talking about Walt Disney and sharing with them that he was also from like, like they are. And it was just kind of cool like that. I think they thought I was making this up. You might think that I'm making this up, but I'm totally not. It happened in that exact way. So before I even considered it, it was set. We were going to see baby Walt Disney and Little Roy Disney's house. But before we get to that visit, I think we have to go back in time and do a little history lesson here. In 1891, Elias and Flora Disney and their two children, Herbert and Raymond, moved to Chicago so that Elias could find work building the 1892 World's Colombian Exposition. While working, he bought some property on Chicago's north side in the Hermosa neighborhood on Trip Avenue. At the time, this area was on the outskirts of Chicago, almost more like a suburban area, though still part of the city. The Disney's plan was to build a home for their family, but also to create a model home that could be shown to potential clients who wanted Elias to build them a home. Flora Disney served as the architect designing the home and Elias led the effort to build it. The building of their new family home and their new small business endeavor was done in early 1893. And that was great because Flora Disney was pregnant and gave birth to baby Roy in June of that year. The Disney's built some other houses in the neighborhood and even helped to construct a local church, the one that the Disney's attended. The Disney's were setting up roots in Chicago. In 1901, they had another child. On December 5, Walt Disney was born on the second floor of the house that they had built. Little Walt and Roy shared a bedroom at the back corner of the second floor, just at the top of the stairs. This is where their brotherly bond begins. Just two years later, the Disney brothers were joined by a sister, Ruth, and the family was complete. Walt and Roy grew up in their youngest years at that house. They had fun with scrap parts that they found at the nearby Schwinn Bicycle factory. And they grew up as the City of Chicago began to grow around them. But in 1906, the city had grown too fast for Elias. City life was wearing on the Disney parents and they decided to move their family to the small railroad town of Marceline, Missouri. For years, though, the house continued on with different owners. Walton Roy Disney built a company, a legacy, and made Disney a household name. And they are the reason that you are listening to this podcast and the reason that I'm making this podcast and the reason we are Disney fans and it's Disney fans like us, the ones who realize that this house is important to Disney history. In 1991, some fans unsuccessfully tried to get the home declared a landmark. The owner at the time wouldn't even hear of it. They didn't care who lived in the house before them. And in a way, I can't really blame them, because if your house is a landmark, you can't really do much work to it. But about ten years ago, Dina Benedict and Brent Young, both Disney fans, wanted to preserve the legacy and bought the home. When it came up on the market, the home was in pretty bad shape and a lot had changed over the years. But they began restoring it, trying to return it to what it was. When the Disney's lived there for the past decade, they have been hard at work restoring the house. And earlier this year, on October 14 and 15th, the hundredth anniversary of the Walt Disney Company, October 15, they opened it to the public for the first time, and I was there to tour it. The open House event was part of an annual event called Open House Chicago. It's a really cool event. Every year, the Chicago Architecture center sponsors this free event that allows the public to get glimpses into some of Chicago's most historic buildings to discuss their history and their architecture. It's really neat, and I highly recommend it if you live near Chicago or if you're visiting in the fall when it's going on, there's different neighborhoods that have different buildings that you can tour, and each neighborhood in Chicago has its own little vibes, and there's just tons of places throughout the whole city that you could tour during open House Chicago. But this past year, open House Chicago corresponded with the hundredth anniversary of the Disney Company, and that birthplace home was open to tour. So we got to visit on Saturday, the 14th. The house was open from noon to four. We arrived at about 02:00 in the afternoon, about halfway through the tours for the day. And when we got there, we drove past the house to see that the line wrapped around the corner and all the way back to the garage. The house is on the corner. So when the line went along the side of the house, it wasn't like it went houses and houses down and around the corner. It was just wrapped around the house itself, which was kind of cool because you got to see a lot of the outside from the line. After we found a parking spot, we walked up to the house to get our spots in line. Disney fans, we have kind of familiarity with lines, right? It was rainy earlier in the day, but it had stopped. By the time we got there, though, it was still gray and wet, like a typical Chicago fall day. We joined the line at the garage and we were given these color coded wristbands because they were only letting about 15 to 20 guests at a time in for the guided tour. They told us that from the garage on, it would be about 30 minutes from that point. But it did end up being about an hour long wait because of fast passes. I thought those were gone. No, they weren't real fast passes, but just like at the Disney Parks Lightning lanes, fast passes slowed down those standby queues. They kind of had their own version of the fast pass here because members of the Chicago Architecture center were able to cut the line for special tours. That was okay, though, because we had what was outside the house to pass the time. You see, the garage had been transformed into a gift shop. Oh, Disney fans. We love a gift shop, right? So in the garage, there were T shirts for the birthplace home. I got one. It was really cool. It has the blueprints of the house on it. It even has, like, little signatures that say, like, built by Elias Disney, designed by Flora Disney. It's really neat. Check out my Instagram. I'll put a picture up there. And there was also Ozell soda. Now, Ozell Soda has been a fundraising project since the restoration of the Disney birthplace home had started. And I think it's time for another little peek into history. A long time ago, Ozelle was a company that made orange carbonated beverage, kind of like a soda pop. Ozelle was made in Chicago, and Elias Disney actually invested heavily in the company, but it was when he lived in Kansas City. So he was living in Kansas City, but sent money back up to people he knew in Chicago to invest in the Ozell Company. But later on, when the company was expanding into jellies and jams and approaching profitability and life maybe wasn't as easy in Kansas City. Elias was coaxed by the founder of Ozell to move the family back to Chicago and kind of contribute on the ground more and started working there himself. Walt also got a job with Ozell as a teenager, cleaning jelly jars and packing up crates until, of course, that is when he joined the Red Cross in France at the end of the First World War. A few years after they moved back to Chicago. Though, Ozell eventually went out of business. There had been some bad business decisions made outside of Elias'control, and the company went under pretty much to be forgotten. In fact, the only time I had ever heard of it even being a Chicagoan is in Walt Disney biographies. Just kind know page there mentioned Ozell. But the same people behind the Walt Disney Birthplace renovation brought back the brand as a soda company to raise funds for the project. Today you can drink Ozell soda and at the same time support the Walt Disney Birthplace project. Some of the flavors include Orange Dreamsicle, which is a throwback to the original Orange Ozell flavor. They've got a classic root beer, cherry jubilee, cherry soda, and vanilla dream, kind of a cream soda. But they also have my favorite, a couple of Disney inspired flavors, too. They have one called Pineapple Whip, which, of course, you could probably guess is a dole whip flavor. And they have one that's called Grape Moments, and it's got a little Abraham Lincoln on the label. I actually have a bottle of grape moments in my refrigerator. I bought it, like, four years ago, and I can't bring myself to drink it. I think I just have to put it on the shelf behind me here in my studio. I'll put a picture of it, too, on my Instagram. But you could find more about the current Ozell right now on their website, which is ozell.com. It also will link you back to the Disney Birthplace website and some other information. It's really cool stuff, but. Oh yeah, where were we? Oh yeah. Waiting in line. Ozell soda T shirts, gift shop in the garage. That was cool. As we waited in line, we could see the exterior renovations of the house, or really, I should say restorations. When they redid the outside to restore it back to its original glory, they chose two different wood siding colors. One represented the original structure to show where the Disney House originally ended, and the other showed where an addition had been put on later by other owners. Soon we made it up to the corner where you could see that the city of Chicago had named this block of Tripp Avenue honorary Disney Family Way and put up a street sign to commemorate it. That was really cool. In front of the house at the parkway, we also noticed that there were bricks with donor names on them. Kind of like outside the Magic Kingdom, except these noted people who had given donations to the restoration project. And then we were finally at the front of the house. And in front of the house, you could see it was a narrow two story cottage with a long porch running across the entire front. It didn't look very big. It was in fact smaller than the house next door. And it was kind of hard to believe that they had Seven Disney's living in this house, especially before that addition had been put on. Before you knew it, it was our turn to tour the house. We were invited in with about ten other guests, and we went up the stairs and immediately to the right into the living room. From the living room, out the windows, we could see the front into the front yard on Trip Avenue side. And we could also see out the side windows to where the line had queued up along the side of the house. In the living room, we were greeted by members of the Chicago Architecture center and Brent Young, the project director and founder of the restoration. He told us a little bit about the renovations so far, trying to match original wall coverings, fixtures and trim. There wasn't much furniture in the house yet. They were still kind of getting all of the walls figured out, floors, ceilings, all that kind of stuff figured out first before they would start bringing in furniture from that time period. One thing he did point out is that each of the windows in the house has a little plaque with a donor's name. Donors were able to sponsor a window for the renovation. And then he directed us to the big window in the front, the one that looked over the porch in the front yard, and he let us know that that window there was sponsored by imagineer Bob Gurr, who tends to be one of the secret themes of synergy, Love's company podcast here. He's mentioned a lot, but Bob Gurr wanted to be part of this project. Walt Disney had done a lot for him, and he wanted to give back to this project to commemorate Walt. Next, we were led into the dining room, which was just behind the living room in the house, and there was a picture of the two founders of the project with Mickey Mouse. Yes, not like a animated Mickey Mouse, but the walk around Mickey Mouse from the parks. You see, the Walt Disney Company have helped to get behind this project and offer support. They're totally in their corner on this renovation. When we next entered the kitchen, just next to the dining room at the back of the house, the guides showed us some concept art and told us that Disney was helping them to make magic windows for the kitchen and dining room. Essentially, these magic windows, they're going to be like screens that look out to what used to be the back of the house. Now there's an addition there, so you can't really have windows in those rooms. So these magic windows are going to be screens that look out and give you a sense of what it would have looked like to be in the house at the turn of the century when it was built. After checking out the kitchen, we moved down the hall, back towards the front of the house, and under the stairs, there was a small door. And we were told that this was originally a small bathroom. Now, you might think that's weird, a little bathroom under the stairs. But like we said earlier, Elias had built this house as a model home to show off options people could build in their own homes. At the time when this was built, people didn't have indoor bathrooms. They didn't have toilets in their house. They had to go out in the backyard. So this was like a real futuristic house of the future, modern living upgrade that Elias put in his house. A bathroom, a toilet under the stairs. So it was a small, little unused spot that he could use for a bathroom in their house. This was cutting edge stuff, and he wanted other people who wanted to build their houses to see this really cool, cutting edge stuff and put it in their homes as well. In fact, Elias's bathroom under the stairs was the first home in the neighborhood to have an indoor bathroom. So we continued down that hallway, past the really cool bathroom under the stairs concept and towards the front door. And this is when you could see above the front door on the way to the staircase, the stained glass window that showed the Disney family crest. It was a nice little touch, and it was one of the first times I really felt like we were in the Disney's house. We saw that name above the door. We, of course, then turned and went up the stairs to find three bedrooms. The stairs led from the front of the house, just past the front door all the way to the back of the house. So we had to walk around to get back to the main bedroom that overlooked the front yard. The main bedroom was Elias and Flora's room. Inside the room, we were told that during the restoration, they found a secret compartment, a secret door in the floor. When they opened it, they actually found some documents from the Disney family, as well as a box of cigars that had been there since the Disney family had lived there back in the 19 hundreds. Then they directed us to a large space off the bedroom that looked similar to a more modern walk in closet. However, it wasn't originally used as a closet. Instead, it was a small nursery. And this was the space that they told us is where Baby Ruth stayed in the house until they moved to Marceline, Missouri. The next room over was Herbert and Raymond Disney's room. In this room, they showed off some extra detail that they put into the restored, or rather recreated trim around the windows and doors. Though it had been taken down, they were able to find a little bit of the original trim in the back of a closet. Part of the restoration so far was recreating this wood trim everywhere in the house. In Herb and Ray's room, they added some whimsical pops of color to the woodwork to make it a little more fun for the kids that stayed there. Finally, we ended up in the last bedroom, the one we first passed at the top of the stairs. Walt and Roy's room. It was a little room at the back of the house, a little dark, too. Though they only lived in the house until Walt was six, this was where Walt and Roy would be living, in tight quarters, starting those lifelong bonds of brotherhood, friendship, and business partnership. Walt and Roy's room also had some concept art of what the restoration hoped to add to this space. It featured some wall projections that stem creativity and imagination. One of the goals of the project is to stem that same creativity, curiosity, imagination in the children of Chicago and all the children who come to visit, to let them know that they can do the same kind of amazing things that the Disney brothers did. After visiting Walton Roy's room, we had hit the end of the tour, but we were all the way upstairs, so they let us actually out the back of Walton Roy's room through what used to be a window, but was now a doorway into the new addition that was added onto the house. Later we went back down the stairs and outside. I will say I felt pretty prideful that this city, the one that I identify with as my own, was the one where Walt Disney was born. And this house was a really important part of Disney history. It was really on that weekend, the best way I could with my family, celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the Walt Disney Company. I would highly recommend, if you do get the chance to visit the Walt Disney birthplace home. I'm sure it's only going to get better and better as time goes on. As that concept art comes to fruition. I really recommend getting a chance to go and see it. If you ever do. If you're close by and they open it again, pop in there. If you're going to be visiting at a time when it's open to the public, definitely stop by. So on this show, I always talk about how Disney connects to everything, but really this experience helped me feel more personally connected with Walt. Visiting the birthplace home has kind of also inspired me to go and want to visit some other Walt Disney the man historical sites next year. I'm already planning a visit to Marceline, Walt's hometown. I'll have to give you a report on that. And while I'm going to be in Marceline, I figure I might as well stop by Kansas City to see those original Laffogram Studios. I'll definitely keep you posted as to when I'm going, what it's going to be like, what I see in those places, too. I want to thank you so much for listening to this episode and any other episodes of Synergy, Love's company that you've listened to. I truly appreciate you taking your time to listen to me talk about Disney in these podcast episodes. You take your time to listen to me talk about Disney. I would love to hear from you and the best way that you can talk back to me is on the socials. So find me on there. Say hi, let me know what you like about the show. Let me know what you don't like about the show. Whatever you want to tell me. I want to hear what you think. You can find me on Instagram and threads at Synergylovescompany. And I'm still on Twitter and I'm also on Blue sky at Eric H. Synergy. And here's something new. If you feel like you're getting value from Synergy Loves Company and you want to give some back, you could do that on Ko Fi. K-O-F-I. If you look in the show description or go on synergylovescompany.com, you'll find a link to my Ko Fi page where you can donate and give back to the show to help it keep going, because every little bit helps. Another way, of course, that you can always help is by sharing the show to help us grow. Share Synergy loves company with a friend who loves Disney just as much as you do. You can just tell them to visit synergylovescompany.com because sharing the show is actually the number one way that you can support the show, and your support means the world to me. Thank you for exploring Disney's connections with me. And until next time, keep discovering the magic in everything.