The Real Emerald City:
L. Frank Baum’s Coronado Sanctuary

In early 1904, struggling with severe heart palpitations and chronic bronchitis aggravated by Chicago's bitter lakefront winters, Lyman Frank Baum followed his physician's urgent recommendation to seek the gentle, dry maritime climate of Southern California. When he and his wife, Maud Gage Baum, arrived at the Hotel del Coronado in February 1904, the author was instantly enchanted by the island's tranquility.

Enamored with the neighborhood, the Baums soon rented a cheerful yellow Craftsman bungalow at 1101 Star Park Circle, situated just two blocks from both the Pacific surf and the sprawling red-roofed Hotel del Coronado. Here, between 1904 and 1910, Baum established his seasonal creative sanctuary.

Every morning at 8:00 AM, Baum sat at a rustic wicker writing desk on the glass-enclosed sun porch. Surrounded by potted ferns, blooming bougainvillea, and the salt air of the Pacific, he dipped his steel-nib fountain pen into black ink and drafted the adventures of Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and Princess Ozma. Neighborhood children quickly learned the routine. By mid-morning, local Coronado youngsters would gather quietly on the front lawn, where Baum would emerge to read them raw handwritten drafts of his latest chapters, carefully watching their eyes to see which jokes and magical transformations elicited the purest delight.

Baum’s artistic footprint is permanently embedded in the physical fabric of the Hotel del Coronado. When hotel management made the historic decision to replace the Crown Room’s original gas lamps with incandescent electrical chandeliers in late 1904, Baum, a frequent diner and close friend of the hotel directors, was invited to sketch a design for the fixtures.

Drawing upon his royal fairy-tale motifs, Baum conceived massive, hand-carved wooden chandeliers shaped like imperial crowns, studded with sparkling exposed electric bulbs. Suspended from the monumental 33-foot sugar-pine ceiling, built entirely with wooden pegs and without a single steel nail, these majestic crown fixtures have illuminated state banquets for twelve U.S. presidents, foreign monarchs, and millions of international guests for over 120 years.

Moreover, architectural historians widely agree that Hotel del Coronado’s Victorian silhouette, with its dramatic conical towers, sweeping red-shingled pavilions, and nighttime illumination by thousands of Edison incandescent bulbs, heavily informed Baum’s literary descriptions of the Emerald City of Oz, which he described in The Emerald City of Oz (written right here in 1910) as a dazzling palace of towers, domes, and sparkling light.