Part VI
Chapter Fifteen
As Walter stepped off the train and onto the platform at Kansas City’s Union Station, he was met by Roy. Walter put his suitcase down to shake his brother’s hand, finally looking forward to being with a member of the family who wanted him around and believed in his dreams. Picking up his luggage, Walter followed his older brother across the platform which stretched below the metal awnings and into Union Station.
While Walter had travelled from Union Station before when he joined the family in Chicago, he had been more focused on finding the appropriate platform for the train headed to Illinois rather than the beautiful storeyed building that would become so important to him over the next few years.
Kansas City’s original Union Depot opened in 1878, serving the city’s numerous railroads from the West Bottoms district, located just east of the Mississippi River. In 1903, a flood devastated the area, with waters rising as high as almost 2 metres, causing thousands of dollars of damage to the depot, which was one of the most important buildings contributing to the economic life of the city. When the waters finally receded, it was discovered that sediments carried by the flooding of the river had been deposited around the building’s foundations and inside the building to be piled against the walls. It was quickly determined that as the city’s importance continued through the expanding railroads, a new and larger depot needed to be built on a higher elevation away from the river to prevent such occurrences from happening again.
Representatives from the twelve railroads that passed through Kansas City met together and settled on a site a few miles away, south of downtown, and set to work searching for an architect to design the new structure. The new depot would take the name Union Station, signifying the united efforts of the dozen railroad companies in constructing and operating what would become the largest railroad station west of the Mississippi River. This new organisation became incorporated and was called the Kansas City Terminal Railway, specifically for the purpose of overseeing the construction of the new Union Station.
Over the next few years, a number of architects presented their ideas to the Kansas City Terminal Railway, but the contract was awarded to Jarvis Hunt, nephew of Richard Morris Hunt, who had designed many of the buildings at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition of Chicago and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. While Hunt had experience in designing railway stations in the past – he had designed the 16th Street Station in Oakland, California and Joliet, Illinois’ Union Station – his plans for the Kansas City station were unique enough to pique the interest of the railroad executives. Access to the station was gained through one of two grand entrances, which were set beneath three 12-metre tall arched windows. Tall marble columns stretched to the roofline, supporting the heavy roof that covered the structure. The entire building faced south, which at first glance seemed odd, as the central business district of Kansas City was actually north of the station. However, Hunt had two reasons for this. First, electric lighting, especially in large interior spaces, was in its infancy during the first few decades of the twentieth century. As a result, the large south-facing windows provided abundant natural light to those waiting in the station. Secondly, while downtown Kansas City was located to the north, Hunt recognised that the city was going through exponential growth, especially with the expansion of the railroads and the rumour of Kansas City being America’s next site for a Federal Reserve bank. Thus, Hunt believed, and rightly so, that as the city expanded, his new Union Station would sit at the future centre of the city as its boundaries continued to expand southward.
As Hunt designed the building, he drew extensively on the City Beautiful movement advocated by Kansas City Star owner William Rockhill Nelson and employed by designers of the World’s Columbian Exposition. Like his uncle and Nelson, Jarvis Hunt believed that by designing a grand beaux-arts style structure, Union Station would inspire the citizens of Kansas City to live a noble life, one which would instil civic order and pride in their city.
Construction of Union Station began in the autumn of 1910, utilising the day’s newest methods and technology, including the rerouting and enclosing of OK Creek, the dynamiting of rocky hillsides to flatten the land for the building’s footprint, and the use of concrete, steel and limestone to construct the station. More than 500 men worked on the station at any given time to construct the building, which covered more than 5 acres and had approximately 900 separate rooms.
When Union Station officially opened on 30 October 1914, nearly 100,000 people arranged themselves in front of the structure to welcome its first train before making their way into the Grand Hall. Kansas Citians stood within the cavernous room, marvelling at the 27-metre high ceilings, which were coffered and intricately painted, lit by three enormous crystal chandeliers. A semi-circular mahogany ticket desk protruded towards the centre of the Grand Hall, while small shops, shoe-shines, and restaurants lined the hall’s outer wall. In fact, Fred Harvey, the nation’s largest operator of restaurants along the railroad, was headquartered in Union Station, ensuring that all Fred Harvey restaurants throughout the United States provided consistent and quality meals at each of its locations, including its new restaurant sitting next door to the Santa Fe station in Marceline.
Passing beneath the 2-metre diameter, back-lit clock hanging from the ceiling, visitors to Union Station entered the North Waiting Room, a 100-metre-long hall which ran perpendicular to the Grand Hall. This room was filled with wooden benches, upon which travellers perched awaiting their train. Black signs hung next to a series of doors along the east and west walls of the room, listing the departure times of the scheduled trains, as well as the various cities each train would service. When the time came, passengers would walk through the doors and down a narrow staircase to one of eight train platforms collectively servicing sixteen individual tracks, which ran below the North Waiting Room.
As the United States slowly began to mobilise its resources and personnel with the outbreak of the First World War and ultimately entered the fray in 1917, Union Station quickly became a hub of action in Kansas City. The depot soon began offering services to travellers and railroad workers alike, including bookstores, grocers, a pharmacy, a barber shop, restaurants, and lounges servicing both men and women. The station was soon hailed as the third largest and busiest train depot in the United States, second only to Grand Central Station and Pennsylvania Station, both located in New York City. As troops began deploying across the North American continent as America became committed to the conflict, Union Station quickly became one of the busiest in the country; it serviced more than 79,000 trains in 1917 alone, including a record-breaking 271 trains in one day.
Thus, when Walter Disney arrived in Union Station in the autumn of 1919, he and Roy found themselves within a bustling depot where immigrants, soldiers returning from war, businessmen, and young families arrived and departed the city, took meals at Fred Harvey’s, or attended meetings in one of the station’s many rooms. Stepping out of the front doors and into the bright sunlight, Walter’s eyes quickly adjusted, observing a smattering of buildings of the expanding city surrounding a tall, green hill directly across from Union Station. Together, the two brothers made their way to a nearby tram station, boarding a conveyance that took them to the neighbourhood in which they had lived before the war.
Walter had made arrangements to stay with the family of his brother Herbert, who had moved into the house owned by Elias and Flora on Bellefontaine. While he had a place to live, Walter needed work to support his expenses, and started looking for art jobs to pursue his dream of becoming a cartoonist.
Walter began by visiting The Kansas City Star, for whom he had delivered newspapers during his childhood. He figured that his experience with the paper would give him an edge over potential competition in becoming a part of the organisation’s art department. He took a portfolio of the work he had done for The McKinley Voice and some of the pieces he had created while stationed in France. Unfortunately, he was told that there were no openings as an artist for the Star. Shortly after, however, he saw an advertisement in the paper that they were looking for a candidate as an office boy and his heart leapt: any position for the newspaper, however lowly, could eventually lead to a position in his dream job as a cartoonist.
The fact that Walter was still a minor and should probably still have been in high school could pose a problem in securing a job with the paper. Would they even be interested in someone with so little perceived experience? The memory of he and Russell Maas fooling the American Red Cross into believing they were older than they were came flooding back, so he began to hatch a plan to once again convince a hiring agent that he wasn’t too young for a position. He remembered the comments his mother and sister had made when they saw him in uniform after returning from France, and donned his American Red Cross uniform, feeling that it made him look more grown up, mature, and experienced. Marching through the door and into the foyer of The Kansas City Star, the young man removed his uniform cap and walked up to the reception desk.
“I am here to apply for the position of office boy,” he explained, lowering his voice a half-octave.
The man sitting behind the desk in the hiring office glanced up from the papers scattered across his desk and looked Walter over. His eyes lingered on the uniform with its American Red Cross patch and realistically drawn-on Croix de Guerre. The newspaper man looked back down at his papers.
“Too old,” he muttered in a dismissive way without looking at Walter.
“But I’m only 17,” Walter insisted.
“You wouldn’t want this job anyway. It wouldn’t pay enough to support your family.”Walter was frustrated as he realised that the man still thought he was older than 17.
“Sir, I would like to work for the Star,” he insisted.
Frustratedly, the man sat back from his desk and looked up from his papers. “What have you done for work?”
“I drove ambulances for the American Red Cross in France after the war.” The man’s face changed upon learning this information.
“Well, then you need to visit the transportation department. Give them your name, and when they have an opening for a position as a delivery driver, they’ll contact you.”
Walter was discouraged: he didn’t want to deliver newspapers like he had for his father and it obviously hadn’t done him any favours now. He was a creative and his passion was art – he didn’t want to spend his life working with his hands in a blue-collar job like his father.
With the Star as a dead end, Walter decided to apply for a job in the art department of its competitor, The Kansas City Journal, this time in civilian clothes, not wanting to be mistaken for being older than he was due to his American Red Cross uniform. Once again, the answer was the same: no openings.
Walter was very disheartened. He was starting to wonder if his father had been right – that cartooning wouldn’t be a feasible way for him to make a career. He found himself wandering the streets of Kansas City until he arrived at the front door of the First National Bank. If anyone could encourage him at this time from being in such low spirits, it would be Roy. Pausing outside the door, Walter was captivated by the soaring architecture of the building. Tall marble columns supported a grand flat roof stretching above a frieze and decorative guttae, all of which symbolised that the financial institution would stand the test of time, much like the Greek and Roman architecture the building’s façade was modelled after. Would Roy really encourage him? Walter wondered. Roy was so successful, serving as a bookkeeper for one of Kansas City’s leading financial institutions. He was so good at what he did that the bank had held his job when he went off to war.
Taking a deep breath, Walter decided to take a chance and heaved open the heavy wooden door of the bank. The grand design of the interior didn’t make him feel any better about his situation. His shoes clicked on the tile floor, drawing the gazes of the tellers sitting behind the waist-high counter stretching around the lobby’s perimeter, as well as the other patrons doing business. Tall columns stretched up to support the elegantly designed coffered ceiling, from which hung chandeliers, sunlight pouring in from the floor-to-ceiling windows causing the crystal fixtures to sparkle. A clock perched along the back wall ticked as the second hand circled its face, reminding Walter of the short time he had to make his career choice before it was too late and he was relegated to a life of manual labour like Elias.
A bank employee asked Walter how he could be served, and Walter asked if his brother was available. Moments later, Roy came to the teller’s counter and waved him behind the counter, leading him to his desk. It turned out that Walter’s worries were unfounded; Roy was completely supportive, assuring him that something would come along sooner than later.
One of Roy’s colleagues, sitting at a nearby desk, overheard the brothers’ conversation.
“You’re into art and drawing?” the bank employee asked.“I have a couple of friends by the names Pesmen and Rubin. They own an advertising agency, and the other night they’d mentioned they were looking for an apprentice to join them.” Walter got the address of the agency and thanked Roy’s colleague, rushing to Pesmen-Rubin from the bank.
After Louis Pesmen met Walter in the lobby of his business, the young man realised he didn’t have any pieces of artwork with him to prove he was qualified for a job. Walter’s enthusiasm impressed Pesmen and he encouraged the boy to return the next day with some samples.
The following day, during another brief meeting with Pesmen, Walter showed off some of the work he had done overseas of his doughboy character, caricatures, and political cartoons that he had sent to The McKinley Voice and American humour magazines. Pesmen was impressed and asked Walter if he could start the following week, explaining that he wasn’t sure what they could afford to pay him. Walter was excited about the opportunity, realising that a pay check wasn’t essential, as he was living with Herbert for practically nothing and a job at Pesmen-Rubin would give him the experience necessary to make him attractive to the Star.
A few days later, when Walter sat down at his drawing board in his new position working for Pesmen and Rubin, he was given the assignment of designing an advertisement for farm equipment in a local Christmas catalogue. Towards the end of the week, as Bill Rubin was making his rounds, he stopped by Walter’s station to survey his work. Walter looked up at his new boss, dismayed to see him with a slight frown and shaking his head. Walter’s stomach dropped: he had worked so hard, finally securing an art job for himself, and management was already displeased with his work!
“I don’t know,” Rubin said to Walter, keeping his voice low so the other artists couldn’t hear. “How about fifty a month?”
“Dollars?” Walter gasped. Rubin nodded. “That would be perfectly okay,” Walter stuttered. In fact, it was better than okay: he had not expected to get paid so much. As Rubin walked away, he offered encouragement, patting Walter on the shoulder as he moved on to the next artist’s station.
Walter could hardly focus on his work for the rest of the day. He couldn’t wait to tell everyone important to him the great news of finally finding success in his new job. At last, when it was time to leave for the day, he quickly pulled on his jacket and practically ran to a nearby hotel where Uncle Robert and Aunt Margaret lived. Bursting into their room, Walter went to the bed, where he found Margaret propped up.
“Auntie! I got a job and they are paying me money to draw pictures!” he exclaimed.
“That’s nice, Walter,” his aunt mumbled between hacking coughs. An older woman now, her body was beset by pneumonia and she was unable to muster the strength to be excited for the nephew she had purchased art supplies for when he was a small boy in Marceline. Walter spent a few minutes talking to his favourite aunt but left disappointed that she hadn’t shared in his excitement. She succumbed to her illness shortly afterwards, adding to Walter’s disappointment that she, who had fostered his passion, hadn’t lived to enjoy the fruits of her investment.
Over the next couple of months, Walter was assigned a number of advertising and layout jobs at Pesmen-Rubin including designing letterheads and illustrations for advertisements for area businesses. Because of the technical nature of the job and the deadlines expected, the budding artist had to learn a number of time-saving techniques, which he picked up from other artists working for the agency. One of these artists, a Dutch-American young man named Ubbe Iwwerks, was something of an expert at lettering and commercial art. The time that Walter and Ubbe spent together at work quickly evolved into a close friendship. As the two young artists became especially close, Ubbe began referring to his friend as Walt. It was a nickname that stuck.
Completing successful work in the advertising world could often lead to the opening of an account with the agency, providing regular work for the agency and guaranteed jobs for the artist. In late autumn 1919, Walt was assigned to design the weekly programme for the Newman Theater, a nearby movie palace owned by Frank Newman, a Kansas City businessman who owned a small theatre chain throughout the city. Newman was trying to drum up interest in the film industry in Kansas City with his theatre programmes. He had opened the Newman Theater the previous June, deemed at the time to be the most expensive and ambitious movie palace built in Kansas City. While Walt only designed the programme for a few weeks, more importantly, he established a relationship with Newman that would serve him in the years to come.
As November 1919 came to a close, the work at Pesmen-Rubin began to slow down: most of the advertising work for the Christmas catalogues had been completed and there were more artists than jobs. Because he had only been hired six weeks earlier, Walt was among the first to be laid off. While he was very likely disappointed about losing the job that paid him for ‘drawing pictures’, he recognised that more importantly, he had gained not only experience but also a reputation for his work throughout the city.
Ubbe was soon laid off as well, and the two began to discuss ways they could pool their talents to go into business on their own. Inspired by the lettering, layout and advertising work they’d done at Pesmen-Rubin, Walt and Ubbe began canvassing area businesses to design and provide illustrations for a number of newsletters. Upon entering a local business, they introduced themselves as the owners of Iwwerks-Disney Commercial Artists (rather than Disney-Iwwerks, which sounded too much like the name of an optometrist’s office) and showed off some of the best work they’d done for their previous employer.
While many of the businesses they approached turned them down, the boys did establish a few accounts. Walt remembered his old friend Walt Pfeiffer, whose father had set up a newsletter for the local chapter of the United Leatherworkers’ International Union. Remembering the talent Walt had exhibited as a boy, Mr Pfeiffer quickly hired the two artists to design the letterhead for the newsletter, featuring small illustrations of a number of leather goods.
But simply working out of their homes didn’t make the pair feel or look very professional. Walt soon learned that office space existed at the Mutual Building, where the headquarters for The Restaurant News was located. The Restaurant News was a weekly publication provided to local restaurants full of advertisements for customers to read while they had their meal. The owner of the paper, Alvin Carder, was a few years older than Walt and had grown up as his next-door neighbour when the two lived on Bellefontaine.
At first the meeting was congenial, as the two young men shook hands and reminisced about growing up as neighbours. After asking about each other’s parents, Walt pulled out the portfolio of work he and Ubbe had compiled and explained that Iwwerks-Disney wanted to serve as the art department for The Restaurant News.
“Gee, I’m sorry, Walt,” said Carder. “I don’t have enough work to keep you busy here. I don’t really need an art department.”
“That’s okay,” Walt explained. “We are really looking for a place to work. We will do work for you when you need it for free. Besides, then you can brag that you have an art department.”
The newspaper owner thought for a moment. “Okay,” he agreed. “I typically pay the guys that do the printing ten dollars a week for their work. I’ll not only give you space in the office for two desks, I’ll even give you the ten dollars I would normally pay the printers. I’ll also encourage the businesses that advertise with me to employ your services for their ads.”
Iwwerks-Disney was in business.
Needing the capital to invest in the supplies to fit out his business, Walt sent a letter home to Flora, who was safeguarding money he’d sent home while working for the American Red Cross in France. Elias was furious and tore up the letter: not only did Walt dare to write home after abandoning the family in Chicago, he had the gall to ask for money when he knew his parents were struggling. O-Zell had hit some financial trouble and Scrogin had asked for additional funds from investors to help keep the factory afloat.
Flora, ever the mother trying to keep the peace between her husband and their sons, quickly wrote to Walt, asking what he planned on doing with the money. Insisting that the cash belonged to him and he had only entrusted his parents to watch over it until he had need of it, Walt explained that he and a friend planned to go into business and needed the money to support the purchasing of supplies. Disgust was added to Elias’s fury at his son, and he reiterated that art was no way to make a career. But not wanting a fight, Elias and Flora relented. However, feeling that they had better foresight than their naïve son, they only sent him half of the money he requested; they were afraid that this newest pursuit might be a squandering of his hard-earned money and they didn’t want him to go bankrupt.
A few days later, Walt and Ubbe carried their few boxes of art supplies into the headquarters of The Restaurant News. They soon learned that Carder had indeed found space for them to work – in the bathroom. The space was tight, allowing for only two desks and the few pieces of equipment they had managed to purchase with Walt’s wartime pay, including an airbrush and tank of compressed air for Ubbe to work his magic on the drawing board.
Carder was true to his word: over the next month, Iwwerks-Disney was able to secure work illustrating for The Restaurant News, as well as a number of the businesses that advertised in the paper. Soon, the pair had enough money saved up to move their office to the nearby Railway Exchange Building, where there was more space.
One morning in late January, Walt walked into the Iwwerks-Disney office to find Ubbe sitting at his desk looking over the morning edition of The Kansas City Star.
“Walt, there’s an ad in the paper,” Ubbe explained without looking up. Taking his hat and coat off and placing them on his desk, Walt turned to his friend. “They’re looking for a cartoonist.”
Intrigued, Walt walked over and stood over Ubbe’s shoulder to read the ad. The inquiry was for the Kansas City Slide Company, requesting someone who could draw cartoons and wash slides. After discussing the opportunity, it was decided that Walt should answer the advertisement for the pair, as he was more enthusiastic and eloquent than the introverted Ubbe.
Choosing some of the best samples the pair had created at Pesmen-Rubin and The Restaurant News, Walt went to the Kansas City Slide Company where he met with the owner, A.V. Cauger.
“I’m going to be honest with you, sir,” Walt explained. “I’m looking for part-time work; I have my own art business with a friend that I would like to keep on the side.”
“Well, I’m really looking to hire someone full-time. I am willing to pay 40 dollars a week.”
The aspiring artist felt a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. Earning a consistent 40 dollars each week was more money than he’d ever earned. Keeping his voice steady, he thanked Cauger for his time and explained he would contemplate the offer. It took everything in him not to run out of the building and back to the Iwwerks-Disney office.
Upon his return, Walt explained to Ubbe that Cauger was really only looking for a cartoonist, not someone to create professional art. However, he explained that he was hesitant to take the job because their joint venture had just begun.
“Why don’t you take the job?” Ubbe offered. “I’ll make sure that our contracts here get fulfilled. You can work at the Slide Company during the day and do some work here on nights and weekends.”
It was agreed, and thanks to one of his closest friends, Walt Disney had got his first job creating art for the motion picture industry.