WAS THE EMERALD CITY PALACE REALLY THE HOTEL DEL CORONADO?

by Michael Gessel

Originally published in The Baum Bugle, vol. 32, no. 3 (Winter 1988), pgs. 4–5

Citations

Chicago 17th ed.:

Gessel, Michael. “Was the Emerald City Palace Really the Hotel del Coronado?” Baum Bugle 32, no. 3 (1988): 4–5.

MLA 9th ed.:

Gessel, Michael. “Was the Emerald City Palace Really the Hotel del Coronado?” The Baum Bugle, vol. 32, no. 3, 1988, pp. 4–5.

(Note: In print, this article was supplemented with photographs that have not been reproduced here.)

It has been speculated that L. Frank Baum’s descriptions of the palace in the Emerald City were inspired by the huge Hotel del Coronado, with its turrets, maze of rooms, and extensive gardens. In “The Coronado Fairyland” (The Baum Bugle, Winter 1976), Scott Olsen wrote that the City of Coronado was a strong influence on Baum’s writing of Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, Aunt Jane’s Nieces and Uncle John, The Sea Fairies, and Sky Island. Names, places, and incidents from Coronado did work their way into Baum’s stories. Baum himself said that a crab he found on the Coronado beach became the inspiration for the Wogglebug. The name of the fairy princess Lurline probably came from the Lurline, the yacht of hotel’s owner.

Because Baum may very well have been inspired by other grand Victorian buildings, it is easy to imagine that the Hotel del Coronado was an influence. In The Wizard of Oz (1900), Baum mentions that Dorothy has to walk up three flights of stairs and go through seven passages to get to her room. Grandness and complexity were part of the hotel’s style in Baum’s time. He himself described the hotel in Aunt Jane’s Nieces and Uncle John as a “very labyrinth of passages connecting [the hotel’s] nine hundred rooms and one has to have a good bump of location to avoid getting lost in its mazes.” (p. 234).

The Wizard’s throne room, described as a “big, round room with a high arched roof” bears a passing resemblance to the hotel’s Crown Room, with its 33-foot arched ceiling, which was one of the largest support-free rooms in North America. The hotel’s Coronet Room, for which Baum later designed the light fixtures, also had an arched ceiling.

Despite similarities, there is no clear evidence that Baum ever did see the hotel before a 1904 vacation, four years after the publication of The Wizard of Oz (1900). The descriptions of the palace are general enough that they could match many mansions or palaces built in the Victorian style popular in the middle and late nineteenth century.

Clearly, the palace is not the hotel, since the palace seems constructed chiefly of green marble and emeralds, and the hotel was made entirely of wood. Also, the palace’s decorative touches Baum consistently mentioned were fountains, not a common sight in arid southern California. Another feature Baum frequently mentioned was the marble wall surrounding the palace-another difference from the hotel.

However, after Baum began to vacation in Coronado, the hotel probably did influence his descriptions of the palace and its activities, In several books, Baum mentioned the beautiful flowers and shrubs surrounding the palace. From the beginning, variegated flora had been a hallmark of the hotel. An 1886 advertising booklet for the hotel said, “Beautifully adorned grounds will adjoin the house, planted with the rarest of tropical flowers.”

During the later books, the palace seems to get bigger and takes on the atmosphere of a hotel with guests coming and going. Whereas Dorothy and her friends were each offered one room in The Wizard, in later books guests are given suites. In Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz (1908), even Jim the cab-horse is given his own room, because the palace was “such a big building having many rooms that were seldom in use” (p. 190). When Aunt Em first sees the palace in The Emerald City of Oz (1910), she says with understatement, “It beats the Topeka Hotel” (p. 66).

Beginning with Ozma of Oz, banquets and receptions are an important part of the story in many of the Oz books, just as they were a center of the life at the Hotel del Coronado. The palace becomes a place of entertainment, where games and festivities are held, music is played, and meals are always being served.

The guests at the banquets are all the queer personages who populate the Emerald City, as well courtiers, local citizens, and visitors from the far corners of the Land of Oz and beyond. That is just what you might expect at the premier luxury hotel in the Oz capital.

Dances, balls, and large dinners were common at the Hotel del Coronado. When it was constructed, the hotel’s main building had nearly 400 rooms. The Crown Room could accommodate 1,000 diners. Guests also participated in numerous recreational activities in Baum’s time.

Thus the speculation that Baum modeled the palace after the hotel—while a charming myth that enhances lore of both Oz and the hotel—could not be true. But, the links are strong between the fantastical Emerald City palace and the Hotel del Coronado that many have likened to a fantasy. Baum probably did draw from his experiences of the social life surrounding the hotel in creating the festive atmosphere of the palace in the later Oz books. Therefore the hotel did contribute to the special charm of Oz.

Sidebar: Centenary Celebration Spotlights Baum’s Connection with Historic California Hotel

 The Hotel del Coronado celebrated its 100th anniversary with a year of special events calling attention to its famous guests over the past century, including L. Frank Baum. The hotel was built in 1888 on the Coronado peninsula across the bay from San Diego. Beginning in 1904, Baum was a regular guest, and he wrote several Oz books while vacationing there. He also designed the crown-shaped light fixtures in one of the hotel’s dining rooms.

The tribute to L. Frank Baum began just before the centenary year, when Baum’s daughter-in-law Brenda Baum Turner lit the hotel’s 30-foot Christmas tree. The tree was decorated with a Wizard of Oz theme, and included hundreds of Oz characters.

The weekend of February 19–21, the hotel threw a $5,000-per-couple “Centennial Gala.” On February 19, the actual hundredth anniversary of the hotel, part of hotel’s garden patio was turned into a Wizard of Oz theme area, with singers dressed like characters from the MGM movie. Several actors who played Munchkins in the MGM film were also there. Leading into the area was a rainbow and a yellow brick road.

As part of the year-long celebration, the hotel put on an international hunt for artifacts associated with its history. One item that turned up was a poem by Baum written for Poinsett N. Littlefield, who was born in 1908 in a guest room of the hotel. Baum also presented him with a silver loving cup. Poinsett, now living in Lake Worth, Florida, returned to the hotel for a reception in his honor on March 17. He was met by students from Coronado High School dressed as characters from The Wizard of Oz.

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