At the front of the Team Disney Building, the Seven Dwarfs overlook the Disney Legends Plaza and greet all who enter the building. You can see them for blocks around the Disney Studio and they are a landmark reminder of the influence Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs continues to have on Disney.
For those who have attended D23’s tour of the Disney Studio and Walt Disney Archives, you’ve had the chance to snap a photo in front of these famous icons.
And you’ve probably even heard a few of these seven little-known facts about these massive Dwarfs:
1. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs grossed $8.5 million and became the highest-grossing motion picture of all time until Gone with the Wind came along. With profits from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Walt Disney made a deposit on 51 acres of land in Burbank and began designing a modern studio specifically for the purpose of making animated films. That is why the Dwarfs hold up the Team Disney building.
2. Six of the Dwarfs are each 19 feet tall and weigh 30,000 pounds.
3. Dopey, the smallest Dwarf, is 12 feet tall and is situated at the top, “holding up” the center of the building.
4. The Dwarfs were constructed under the close supervision of Disney Legend John Hench, and are made of a fiberglass and concrete compound, with an internal steel structure.
5. Dopey has even been known to wear a different hat from time to time in honor of a particular holiday or event.
6. Michael Graves, who designed the Team Disney building, is the same architect who created the Dolphin and the Swan in Walt Disney World.
7. The 330,000-square-foot building includes double-barrel vaulted copper roofs, an outdoor courtyard with arcades, an indoor atrium, four screening rooms, and an executive dining room on the top floor of the building, called “The Rotunda Dining Room,” which you can see above the Dwarfs atop the building.
