From Main Street U.S.A. to New Orleans Square, Disneyland’s one-of-a-kind antiques have been carefully selected and placed throughout the various lands they adorn. Direct purchases included arcade machines, settees, and even lampposts. By 1969, the inventory list was maintained by the Disneyland Decorating Department and was perhaps the most unique manifest of items existing anywhere. It contained about 35,000 items of various sizes, shapes, and values with 4,000 items on Main Street alone.
It isn’t any coincidence that many of these antiques share a birthplace with Walt Disney. With so many prop luggage crates, clocks, and scales, to antique furniture and furnishings - you may just pass by some of these authentic antiques as you stroll down the turn-of-the-century setting!
Today, we’ll focus on just two of these props, that offer a window into a period and place in which Walt Disney lived. Please step this way as we explore them further!
“The NELSON-WIGGEN ORCHESTRION STYLE 6 of FRONTIERLAND”
Over the decades, Disneyland has come into the possession of various automatic and manual music reproducing instruments including music boxes, player pianos, organs, nickelodeons, calliopes, and orchestrions, some of which originated in Chicago, Illinois. For instance, since it’s installation in 1976, Disneyland guests may have noticed the coin operated Nelson-Wiggen orchestrion either inside Main Street U.S.A.’s train station, Market House, Country Bear Playhouse and currently the Pioneer Mercantile shop of Frontierland. As with the other antiques we’ll examine, there’s a connection to a place that Walt once lived. In fact, our first antique shares a birthplace with Walt Disney.
It’s a piano and an orchestra - inside a cabinet!
During 1917, Elias Disney bought stock in the O-Zell Company and moved his family back to the place that Walt was born - Chicago! During this time Walt attended McKinley High School during the week and weekend courses at Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. With a growing interest in film, it was at this point (during 1917 to 1918) that Walt Disney is likely to have seen (or heard) orchestrions around town. Several manufacturers were situated out of Chicago, Illinois, and one factory in particular (the J.P. Seeburg Company) was located just two miles from the Disney residence located at 1523 Ogden Avenue.
It just so happened that Oscar Nelson and Peter Wiggen worked as engineers and factory supervisors for the J.P. Seeburg Piano Company of Chicago, Illinois. The two skilled men struck out on their own and started their own manufacturing facility - the Nelson-Wiggen Company of Chicago, Illinois! While Walt was off driving ambulances for the Red Cross in France, the Nelson-Wiggen Piano Company manufactured coin pianos and cabinet orchestrions from 1922 to 1929. These miniature mechanical orchestras were purchased by business establishments like bars and theaters.
The Nelson-Wiggen Cabinet Piano Orchestra Style 6X (manufactured in 1926) was one of those music machines. According to former Disneyland maintenance worker David Allen, “the Nelson Wiggen was part of the AC Raney collection that Walt purchased in 1953. It and several other instruments probably played in the Penny Arcade on opening day.”
This version usually plays ten tunes per roll (on 4X or “G” style rolls). The music is recorded on a paper roll with holes punched in it, which is read by a vacuum control system which feeds air from bellows and pumps into pipes. At one point, the roll on Disneyland’s machine was modified by an employee to play a total of six songs. According to former maintenance worker Dave Allen (who serviced the Nelson-Wiggen from 1974 - 1985), “Alabama Stomp” was included on the re-cut six-song roll for thirty-five years (hand-selected by him). However, the six-tune roll didn’t play as well, and so the original ten-tune roll was was left in the machine.
Today, Disneyland guests can enjoy hundred-year-old melodies piped from the Nelson-Wiggen Style 6X Orchestrion, for just 25¢. Now, (courtesy of Field Guide Beth) you will have the opportunity to hear the Nelson Wiggen Orchestrion Style 6 “speak” for itself. We invite you to rest for a spell, and enjoy a complimentary concert of a few of those popular songs from a bygone era (all expenses paid, of course)!
“The J.S. FORD JOHNSON & COMPANY SETTEE of MAIN STREET CITY HALL”
John Sherlock Ford and Henry W. Johnson founded a chair manufacturing company in Columbus, Ohio in 1867. By 1872, they had changed their name to J.S. Ford & Company, and moved their headquarters to 302 Wabash Avenue, Chicago, Illinois.
The company was known for more than chairs. They also manufactured the fancy settees - a couch of sorts! They were so renowned that the company was considered for government contract to furnish the United States Senate Office Building, after placing a bid.
Sadly the high quality furniture manufacturer J.S. Ford Johnson & Company did not win the bid, and despite a short successful period of high sales the company went bankrupt in 1913. J.S. Ford Johnson & Company was sold to another Chicago based furniture company - S. Karpen & Brothers.
By the time Elias Disney moved his family to Chicago, the old J.S. Ford & Company (now S. Karpen & Brothers) factory building was located on the East side of Chicago just two miles from the family’s flat. Though J.S. Ford & Company never got that prestigious government contract, their work lives on inside a government building of sorts - one of their couches furnishes the foyer of Disneyland’s Main Street City Hall. Today, when you visit Main Street City Hall for any business you must attend, don’t forget to take a moment and notice the plaque while you sit on a piece of history!
Thank you for joining our close examination of these two Chicago artifacts. Disneyland is full of “one-of-a-kind” antiques, and It is our hope that these particular historic pieces (as well as their specific stories) help you to better understand the world that Walt Disney was born into and grew up in over a century ago. In this way, you may truly feel the tone and experience what Walt intended for guests - a thoroughfare of a typical “turn-of-the-century” American town that is, Main Street U.S.A.!