New York Times' Article on Kingswell's historical roots
- Posted on
As you know, Kingswell Skateboard store rests upon the hallowed ground of Walt Disney's first animation studio.
In 1923 Roy and Walt disney occupied our exact address ' location and created Disney Brothers Animation, Which soon became the worldwide mogul, DISNEY.
As you know, Kingswell Skateboard store rests upon the hallowed ground of Walt Disney's first animation studio.
In 1923 Roy and Walt disney occupied our exact address ' location and created Disney Brothers Animation, Which soon became the worldwide mogul, DISNEY.
LOS ANGELES — To most passers-by, there isn’t much reason to pause at the flat-roofed building in Los Feliz that houses a skateboard shop and a photocopy store, with its black awnings and gray stucco exterior.
Unless, that is, you spot a clue to the building’s rich history, plastered to one of its tinted windows: a poster of Mickey Mouse.
The plain building on Kingswell Avenue, in the charming neighborhood below the Griffith Observatory, once held the offices of Walt Disney’s animation company. In 1923, exactly 100 years ago, Disney and his brother Roy moved their fledgling operation from their uncle’s garage in Los Feliz to the back of this building, which was a real estate office at the time.
“It’s like a true California start-up story,” said Ben Proudfoot, a filmmaker who now rents the upstairs level of the building, just off busy Vermont Avenue, for his production studio. “It’s powerful to remember that the world’s largest entertainment company started in this corner unit.”
In August 1923, a 21-year-old Walt Disney moved from Kansas City to Los Angeles “with $40 in my pocket and a coat and a pair of trousers that didn’t match.” He had been working for a few years in drawing and animation and hoped to become a movie director in Hollywood, but he couldn’t find the kind of work he was looking for.
“One half of my suitcase had my shirts and underwear and things and the other half had my drawing materials,” Disney was quoted as saying, according to the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco. “I would have liked to have been a director, [but] before I knew it I had my drawing board out. I started back at the cartoons.”
Disney quickly sold the “Alice Comedies,” a series of shorts that mixed animation and live action, to a national distributor. The success allowed Walt and Roy to move in October 1923 from their uncle’s garage into the Kingswell Avenue offices. Three years later they moved again, to a much larger studio about a mile away on Hyperion Avenue.
At the Disney museum in the Presidio of San Francisco, one room is covered in photos and mementos of the early days of the Disney Brothers Studio on Kingswell. A black-and-white image captures Walt and Roy, both lanky and wearing berets, standing outside the studio in 1924. Handwritten letters between the brothers are stamped with the Kingswell Avenue address. A gag photo of the studio’s staff shows the team assembled in front of the glass storefront, pretending to pour liquor into one another’s mouths. (Prohibition was going strong at the time.)