Columbia Harbour House

The Columbia Harbour House is a restaurant found in Liberty Square.

History

Background

The Columbia Harbour House is themed to being a colonial New England harbour-house and tavern found along the Hudson River. It is themed to colonial New England with its respective setting likely being the late-17th century or early 18th century. During the American Revolutionary War, the proprietor of the Harbour House was one Harold Stalmaster while the innkeeper was a woman named Priscilla "Cilla" Lapham.

It is named for the Sailing Ship Columbia, a vessel which serves not only as the house's namesake but also as its logo. The Harbour House is decorated with nautical artwork and paraphernalia such as: an antique scuba helm, scrimshaw, mermaid figureheads from ships, model ships, nautical paintings, chandeliers made from helms, maps of the ocean, helms mounted on the walls, and charts.

Development History

The restaurant opened in Liberty Square in the Magic Kingdom of Walt Disney World in the summer of 1972. Early maps referred to the restaurant as the Nantucket Harbor House while other older sources referred to it a New Bedford and Montauk Point.

The restaurant is named after the Sailing Ship Columbia, a sailing-ship in Disneyland which is boarded in Frontierland and takes guests past New Orleans Square on a cruise along the Rivers of America. The Sailing Ship Columbia also was notably featured in the nighttime show of Fantasmic! where it was used to portray Captain Hook's ship The Jolly Roger from Peter Pan but was later refurbished to portray The Black Pearl from Pirates of the Caribbean. It is likely that this was done to reference the sailing ship in Liberty Square as New Orleans Square is Liberty Square's Disneyland counterpart (both are, "Squares" themed to romantic locales found adjacent to Frontierland, alongside the Rivers of America with Tom Sawyer's Island and which hold the Haunted Mansion).

In 2011/2012, crates were added to Liberty Square addressed to different residents of the locale. Harold Stalmaster is in-reference to actor Hal Stalmaster (1940-present) who portrayed in the titular Johnny Tremain in the 1957 Disney film Johnny Tremain and the Disneyland (TV show) episode The Liberty Story in 1957 which was made to promote the unbuilt Disneyland expansion of Liberty Street which inspired Liberty Square. There was also a crate addressed to innkeeper Pricilla Lapham who is a character from Johnny Tremain, being Johnny's love-interest. Johnny Tremain is based on a 1947 novel revolving around fictional characters in the American Revolution. These crates however also identified the Harbour House as being set in Massachusetts, in contrast to the Mansion area's upstate New York placement.

Description

The Columbia Harbour House is a restaurant located between Liberty Square and Fantasyland but officially featured in the former. It mainly serves seafood based meals and the inside of it is themed to a colonial New England setting. The exterior is also themed to being New England however the Fantasyland side of it is made to resemble a Swiss cottage. Different dining areas are referred to by the names of different port towns affiliated with New England, namely: Charleston, Cape Hatteras, Chesapeake Bay, Annapolis, Long Island, Cape Cod, Portsmouth, New London, Newport, Marblehead, Salem, and Plymouth.

Connections

The Columbia Harbour House has a landing area on the second floor where you can dine by a window overlooking the Haunted Mansion. The theming in this room is in-theme with the Sleepy Hollow style setting of the Haunted Mansion, being decorated with paintings of ghost-ships. There is also a map framed on the wall marking the locations of 500 ships which were lost on the U.S. coastline between Virginia and North Carolina. The curtains on the window also roughly resemble the wallpaper from the ride. This landing area is identified as, "The Flying Dutchman" and has a portrait identified as the ghost-ship.

A haunted overlay of the restaurant, titled the "Haunted Harbor Galley" was briefly proposed sometime in 2003, essentially having a ghost-ship motif take over the entire space.

It should be noted that the Columbia Harbour House is found directly adjacent to Madame Leota's shop Memento Mori and that the two buildings are connected by a second-story passageway. One of the dining areas is also named for Salem which once served as the home for Liberty Square's incarnation of Madame Leota.

In the unofficial Ghost Gallery storyline which was created by cast-members to explain the story of the Haunted Mansion, the Harbour House made an appearance. In the story, the harbour house was a tavern which was used by a group of pirates who became acquainted with Little Leota. At the tavern Little Leota drank rum with the pirates and sang, "Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life for Me)" from Pirates of the Caribbean.

Trivia

• There is a nautical map in the restaurant which serves as a Hidden Mickey.
• One of the paintings in the restaurant is a recreation of a painting from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954).
  • This film has since been connected to the Haunted Mansion mythology via the Society of Explorers and Adventurers.