Walt Disney’s Palm Springs home is on the market. Constructed in 1962, and in the Disney family until 2015, the exterior of the modern ranch is unremarkable, while the interior pays tireless homage to Walt’s vision with playfully inventive and colorful elements of design.
The 2,443 square foot, four-bedroom 4- bath home has been rendered Disney-centric by its current owners, who have lambasted the home with a veneer of colorful and occasionally cartoonish décor, including painted quotes from Walt on closet interiors; references to historical Disney culture abound. There can be no mistaking the home’s associations with the company’s particular style.
Walt built the home as a replacement for another property in the same community which had been sold off in order to fund the construction of then unprecedented theme park Disneyland. He called it his ‘laughing place,’ and was fond of Smoke Tree Ranch, the small, remote, and tightly-knit group of homeowners and their families which flourished nearby during the period.
Walter Disney founded his iconic American entertainment company in 1923 with brother Roy. As frequently as he’s been criticized for carving a landscape of sentimental fantasy out of an oversimplified worldview, his company vision has been hailed as an archetype of both design and the innovative power of imagination. The modern Disney Corp. is a nearly $100 billion global business.