Behind the Building: Mickey’s House

In a land as energetic and colorful as Toontown, it’s hard to know what to look at first. But as you leave downtown and head toward the western side of the area, your eye will go to one building above all the rest: Mickey’s House. Let’s take a closer look at the home of Disneyland’s most important resident.

Unlike Toad Hall, there was no animated precedent for Mickey’s home. Instead, Imagineers drew inspiration from the Toontown concept itself, stemming from the classic movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit?.

First, you’ll notice the cheerful color scheme of the house. These are softened hues of Mickey’s character colors – grey instead of black, gold instead of yellow, and a reddish orange instead of his fire-engine red shorts. The only color that doesn’t match his design is the green. It could be as simple as green made a nice contrast for the trim…but I see another connection.

In Mickey’s color debut (at the Oscars in 1932), he wore green shorts, not red. It could be a coincidence, but I think it’s a cool connection nonetheless!

Another reason the house stands out is the architecture itself. There are few straight lines inside or outside, from curved rooflines to slanted kitchen cabinets. The whimsical styling throughout Toontown makes you feel like you’re not quite in a “real” place, as if you have stepped into a cartoon instead.

You’ll also notice the proportions of the house aren’t quite right. The dormer windows on the second floor are too small to create much forced perspective, and the porch is very grand with oversized columns compared to the size of the rest of the building. Rather than enforcing realism, this further cements the logic that we’re visiting a cartoon, not a human neighborhood.

Mickey’s house sits behind a small lawn with a white picket fence. Unlike Minnie’s ornate flower beds and shrubs, Mickey keeps it simple with a flower box on the upstairs window and a few plants by the front steps. I think the streamlined design of his yard helps draw your eye straight to the front door, where Mickey himself is often waiting to greet his friends.

Mickey’s home manages to capture the spirit of Toontown’s design while still standing out as an important building. But one detail I love that most people don’t notice – how nestled it is into the hills behind the street. It’s almost as if the house is part of the landscape, completed ingrained into Toontown itself.