WALT DISNEY BIRTHPLACE
2156 N. Tripp Ave.
(1892-93; Elias Disney, builder)
This unassuming frame house is where the internationally famous cartoonist and film maker Walt Disney was born in 1901. Disney's father Elias, a carpenter whose work included construction of buildings for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, built the house.
The WALT DISNEY BIRTHPLACE is typical of the low-cost, wood-frame workers' cottages built throughout the city's neighborhoods during the late-19th and early-20th centuries. The building has been altered over the years, but significant evidence remains to support an accurate restoration in the future.
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Mickey Mouse was born in a small cottage on the Northwest Side of Chicago, as was Donald Duck, Goofy, and a multitude of imaginary characters whose names and images are familiar around the world. As unlikely as this may seem, these characters all can trace their origins to a frame cottage at 2156 North Tripp Avenue, where their creator, Walt Disney, was born on December 5, 1901.
Walt Disney’s international stature as the creator of animated features, films and theme parks has all but obscured his associations with any geographic area outside of Hollywood, yet the origins of his life and career have distinct Chicago associations and imagery. Disney was born in a modest cottage which was hand-built by his father, a carpenter whose professional experience included working on the construction of the World’s Columbian Exposition in the early 189os. Even Disney’s first name "Walter" had local origins, having been given to honor Reverend Walter Parr, pastor of the nearby St. Paul Congregational Church where the Disney family were members. Young Walter Elias Disney lived with his parents and three brothers and one sister in the Tripp Avenue cottage until the age of four when the family sold the house and moved to a farm near Marceline, Missouri, in early 1906.
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