Mr. Sullivan
Well-Known Member
They're not talking about that one, though. There is more than one flag on Main Street USA.
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Main Street USA, Are the American flags "fake" or just accurate to the time period?
- Thread starter Purduevian
- Start date
Off topic, but what is the real reason behind the brown pavement? I always heard the sewage excuse.
I know originally it was either cobblestone or brick, but people were tripping... but why then didn't they make it match the rest of Liberty Square?
LittleBuford
Well-Known Member
I actually created a thread about this a few years ago (linked at the bottom) in which I referred to a very revealing Twitter thread on the topic. You could read the thread in its entirety back then, but now (at least on my phone), you need an X account to read beyond the first post, and I don’t have one. In any case, the thread is helpfully paraphrased here:
The Truth Behind Walt Disney World's "Poop River"
Did Disney World mean to depict colonial sewage?
www.disneydining.com
In short, the original pavement had a strip of cobblestone running down it where the “poop river” now is. Beginning in the ’90s, these cobblestones were replaced, first by red brick and then by the current brown path. The latter apparently was discussed as a representation of faeces among the Imagineers as a sort of inside joke. However, this notion had nothing to do with the land’s original conception, was not meant to be made public, and is not historically accurate anyway (yes, old streets had waste matter along their gutters, but not great streams of the stuff flowing down their centres!).
Another bit of Liberty Square apocrypha: the claim that the window shutters sag as a nod to the practice of using leather hinges when iron was needed for war. This despite the fact that the hinges are all visibly metal and photos from the ’70s show that the shutters originally hung straight!
Last edited:
Agent H
Well-Known Member
I’m curious. Do you know why the shutters sag now?I actually created a thread about this a few years ago (linked at the bottom) in which I referred to a very revealing Twitter thread on the topic. You could read the thread in its entirety back then, but now (at least on my phone), you need an X account to read beyond the first post, and I don’t have one. In any case, the thread is helpfully paraphrased here:
The Truth Behind Walt Disney World's "Poop River"
Did Disney World mean to depict colonial sewage?
In short, the original pavement had a strip of cobblestone running down it where the “poop river” now is. Beginning in the ’90s, these cobblestones were replaced, first by red brick and then by the current brown path. The latter apparently was discussed as a representation of faeces among the Imagineers as a sort of inside joke. However, this notion had nothing to do with the land’s original conception, was not meant to be made public, and is not historically accurate anyway (yes, old streets had waste matter along their gutters, but not great streams of the stuff flowing down their centres!).
Another bit of Liberty Square apocrypha: the claim that the window shutters sag as a nod to the practice of using leather hinges when iron was needed for war. This despite the fact that the hinges are all visibly metal and photos from the ’70s show that the shutters originally hung straight!
LittleBuford
Well-Known Member
No idea. If the sag has come about gradually (something that should be easy enough to tell from pictures), I assume it’s just the ravages of time. What a stroke of genius on Disney’s part that they’ve been able to convince everyone that a maintenance issue is the result of meticulous theming!