Michael D. Eisner and the Walt Disney Company

Honor Award

April 5, 2001  

The National Building Museum presented its prestigious 2001 Honor Award to Michael D. Eisner and The Walt Disney Company. Mr. Eisner, chairman of Disney since 1984 and widely celebrated as one of the nation's most passionate patrons of architecture, will accept the Award before an audience of hundreds of cultural, corporate, and political leaders, as well as many internationally renowned architects and designers. The award recognized Michael D. Eisner's and The Walt Disney Company's unique impact on international culture through innovative architecture and planning projects commissioned from some of the world's most significant designers. The festive black-tie gala was held on Thursday, April 5 in the Museum's Great Hall.

"Michael Eisner has led The Walt Disney Company in its ongoing commitment to exceptional architecture and urban planning with a distinctively American character," said Museum president Susan Henshaw Jones. "The National Building Museum is privileged to salute Disney for consistently dynamic buildings and thoughtful environments that not only entertain, but bring people together and encourage learning at every level. Both Mr. Eisner and Disney are global standard bearers."

"This is an extraordinary honor," Michael Eisner said. "I have always believed that there is a certain level of responsibility that accompanies the creation of buildings and public spaces. We can merely construct the obvious and the bland, or we can strive for innovation and excitement. At Disney, we have always attempted the latter course and it is very gratifying to see the architectural efforts of our company being recognized by our nation's preeminent architectural museum."

Bestowed annually since 1986, the National Building Museum's Honor Award recognizes outstanding individuals and companies who have enhanced public life for American citizens through significant contributions in the fields of architecture, planning, and building. In claiming the Award, Mr. Eisner and Disney join such celebrated past recipients as the Rockefeller and Pritzker families, the IBM Corporation, United States Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, former National Gallery director J. Carter Brown, and Lady Bird Johnson, among others.

Renowned architects Frank Gehry and Robert A.M. Stern, along with leading American real estate developer and past Honor Award recipient Gerald D. Hines, served as chairs of the Leadership Committee for the 2001 Honor Award dinner. Co-chairs included prominent architects David M. Childs, M. Arthur Gensler Jr., Michael Graves, Graham Gund, Hugh Hardy, A. Eugene Kohn, Cesar Pelli, Jaquelin T. Robertson, and David M. Schwarz, as well as distinguished design and construction industry leaders Joseph E. Brown, Douglas Durst, Peter Forster, Richard M. Rosan, and Norbert W. Young, Jr.

From Disneyland to Times Square

Under Eisner's leadership, The Walt Disney Company has reinforced and expanded a history of important environmental design that dates back to the 1940s. Over the past 16 years alone, Disney has commissioned more than 80 buildings from some of the world's most acclaimed architects, including Frank Gehry, Michael Graves, Arata Isozaki, and Robert A.M. Stern. The 2001 Honor Award celebrated this contribution, as well as the company's role in inventing some of America's most beloved and powerfully symbolic structures, from the Sleeping Beauty Castle that since 1955 has stood as the centerpiece of the original Disneyland in Anaheim, California, to the Spaceship Earth geosphere at EPCOT Center, constructed in 1982.

The Honor Award pays equal tribute to Disney's daring initiatives in the areas of community planning and urban restoration. In 1993, the company embarked upon a project widely credited with helping to catalyze the remarkable renewal of New York City's famous Times Square district: the rescue and restoration of the abandoned New Amsterdam Theater on West 42nd Street. A designated landmark that once housed the legendary Ziegfeld Follies and contains the most important Art Nouveau interiors in America, the New Amsterdam is once again the thriving home of live theater as a result of the efforts of Mr. Eisner and his colleagues. As a dramatic counterpoint, a new hotel and entertainment complex developed by Disney is under construction at the opposite end of West 42nd Street.

In contrast to this urban experiment at the heart of the "Crossroads of the World," the planned town of Celebration, Florida, represents Disney's commitment to ideals of harmonious living and accessible design. An experimental community in Central Florida, Celebration is an example of the movement known as New Urbanism; its houses, shops, offices, parks, and school facilities are all within walking distance of each other, and a carefully delineated aesthetic code has been developed and applied to create a sense of calm and order for residents. While such projects have generated healthy debate among critics, Disney earns accolades for the boldness of its vision in this as in other initiatives.