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55-636: Located in the center of the Land of Oz, the Emerald City is the end of the famous yellow brick road , which begins in Munchkin Country . In the center of the Emerald City is the Royal Palace of Oz. The Oz books generally describe the city as being built of green glass, emeralds , and other jewels. In the earlier books, it was described as completely green . However, in later works, green

110-600: A 1964 article, educator and historian Henry Littlefield outlined an allegory in the book of the late-19th-century debate regarding monetary policy . According to this view, for instance, the Yellow Brick Road represents the gold standard , and the Silver Shoes ( Ruby slippers in the 1939 film version) represent the Silverites ' wish to maintain convertibility under a sixteen to one ratio (dancing down

165-439: A Witch introduces Southstairs, an extensive political prison located in the caves below the Emerald City. The green glasses worn by the citizens are often used as a way to stop them from seeing what is going on around them. The video game Emerald City Confidential (2009) portrays the Emerald City as a film noir place with private detectives, widespread corruption, mob bosses, smugglers, and crooked lawyers. Set 40 years after

220-630: A different direction. This version of the road does not exist in Baum's books. Also, at the cornfield where Dorothy meets and befriends the Scarecrow , there is a fork in the yellow brick road leading in different directions. Luckily, they choose the correct one of the three branches that leads to Emerald City. In Disney's 1985 live action semi-sequel to the 1939 movie Return to Oz , Dorothy returns to Oz six months after being sent back home to Kansas from her first visit. Upon her second arrival she finds

275-546: A figure for the actual American West ; if this is true, then the Winged Monkeys could represent another western danger: Native Americans . The King of the Winged Monkeys tells Dorothy, "Once we were a free people, living happily in the great forest, flying from tree to tree, eating nuts and fruit and doing just as we pleased without calling anybody master. ... This was many years ago, long before Oz came out of

330-545: A fraudulent world built on greenback paper money , a fiat currency that cannot be redeemed in exchange for precious metals. It is ruled by a scheming politician (the Wizard ) who uses publicity devices and tricks to fool the people (and even the Good Witches) into believing he is benevolent, wise, and powerful when really he is a selfish, evil humbug. He sends Dorothy into severe danger hoping she will rid him of his enemy

385-496: A media icon and the former editor of the New York Observer , a newspaper that chronicled the city's political, financial and cultural elites, frequently referred to New York as the "Emerald City." In 1987, David Williamson —whose brother-in-law scripted the musical film Oz (1976)—wrote the play Emerald City in which the character Elaine Ross describes Sydney metaphorically as "the Emerald City of Oz." Sydney

440-598: A shared illusion or convention . Here, Dorothy gains entry to the Emerald City (Washington, D.C.) wearing the witch's silver slippers (the silver standard ) and taking the Yellow Brick Road (the gold standard ). There, she met the Wizard ( President William McKinley ), whose power was eventually revealed to be an illusion. There are also scholars who interpret the Emerald City as a benevolent vision of America with its new priorities and values that emerged with

495-594: Is "an allegory of the mystic's journey, using classic alchemical symbols and operations as Dorothy sojourns along the golden path toward reintegration and the discovery of the Philosopher's Stone ." L. Frank Baum was a member of the Theosophical Society and a student of Helena Blavatsky , along with his mother-in-law Matilda Joslyn Gage , the famous American suffragist. The paper draws parallels from theosophical teachings and Baum's own life to suggest

550-498: Is associated with the city of Seattle. Eugene, Oregon is also referred to as the Emerald City, and the region has been known as the "Emerald Empire" as early as 1928. Greenville, North Carolina is called the Emerald City by locals and tourists alike. The city has an art loop in the uptown district that is called the emerald loop, and on New Years Eve, the city drops an Emerald in the Town Common Park. Peter Kaplan ,

605-469: Is located in the exact center of the entire continent. In the book, the novel's main protagonist, Dorothy, is forced to search for the road before she can begin her quest to seek the Wizard . This is because the cyclone from Kansas did not release her farmhouse closely near it as it did in the various film adaptations. After the council with the native Munchkins and their dear friend the Good Witch of

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660-567: Is the only character to do so. The Emerald City of Oz (1910), the sixth book in the Oz series , describes the city as having exactly 9,654 buildings and 57,318 citizens. Baum may have been partly inspired in his creation of the Emerald City by the World Columbian Exposition of 1893, nicknamed the "White City," which he visited frequently, having moved to Chicago in anticipation of the event. W. W. Denslow , who illustrated

715-479: Is where people go expecting their dreams to be fulfilled only to end up with superficial substitutes and broken dreams. In 2006, the annual Sydney New Year's Eve was entitled "A Diamond Night in Emerald City", where the "Diamond Night" alluded to the 75th anniversary of the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge . Subsequently, "Emerald City" has occasionally been used as an unofficial nickname for

770-808: The Sydney Morning Herald , the city's flagship newspaper, is named "Emerald City." Muntinlupa is nicknamed as the "Emerald City of the Philippines " by the Department of Tourism . In Gregory Maguire 's revisionist Oz novels, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (1995) and Son of a Witch (2005), the Emerald City is a much darker place than in Baum's novels. It does have splendid palaces and gardens, but sections are also beset by crime and poverty . Son of

825-744: The Gillikin Country . In the book The Patchwork Girl of Oz , it is revealed that there are two yellow brick roads from Munchkin Country to the Emerald City: according to the Shaggy Man , Dorothy took the longer and more dangerous one in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz . In the classic 1939 film, a red brick road can be seen starting at the same point as the yellow brick road and is entwined with it, despite seemingly going in

880-610: The Tin Woodman wonders what he would do if he ran out of oil. "You wouldn't be as badly off as John D. Rockefeller ", the Scarecrow responds, "He'd lose six thousand dollars a minute if that happened." Littlefield's knowledge of the 1890s was thin, and he made numerous errors, but since his article was published, scholars in history, political science, and economics have asserted that the images and characters used by Baum closely resemble political images that were well known in

935-474: The Wicked Witch of the West . He is powerless and, as he admits to Dorothy, "I'm a very bad Wizard". Hugh Rockoff suggested in 1990 that the novel was an allegory about the demonetization of silver in 1873, whereby "the cyclone that carried Dorothy to the Land of Oz represents the economic and political upheaval, the yellow brick road stands for the gold standard, and the silver shoes Dorothy inherits from

990-491: The economy of consumption . More recently it has been speculated that the name “Emerald City” may be referring to the city of Seattle , Washington . This is incorrect as the American city gained its “Emerald City” nickname in 1982, over 80 years after the publication of Baum's first book. The City of Seattle has used "The Emerald City" as its official nickname since 1982. There is also a drink known as "Emerald City" that

1045-469: The 1890s. Quentin Taylor, for example, claimed that many of the events and characters of the book resemble the actual political personalities, events and ideas of the 1890s. Dorothy —naïve, young and simple—represents the American people. She is Everyman , led astray and seeking the way back home. Moreover, following the road of gold leads eventually only to the Emerald City, which Taylor sees as symbolic of

1100-511: The 1890s. Scholars have examined four quite different versions of Oz: the novel of 1900, the Broadway play of 1902 , the Hollywood film of 1939 , and the numerous follow-up Oz novels written after 1900 by Baum and others. The political interpretations focus on the first three, and emphasize the close relationship between the visual images and the story line to the political interests of

1155-723: The City of Sydney. The head office of the Sydney-based merchant banking and private equity firm Emerald Partners is located on top of the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia building on the Sydney Harbour foreshore, at Circular Quay . The firm was named after Baum's book and the David Williamson play. Fittingly, the word "Oz" can refer to "Australia" in colloquial Australian speech. A long-running gossip column in

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1210-549: The Emerald City is an allusion to the Emerald Tablet , and that Dorothy's journey through Oz closely follows the seven stages of alchemy, from calcination to coagulation. Another direct analogy for "the man behind the curtain" is Mark Hanna , the political strategist behind the national realignment in the Election of 1896. In 1993, W. Geoffrey Seeley recast the story as an exercise in geo-political treachery, suggesting

1265-502: The Ghost Dance religion respectively. Dorothy responds that they were “lucky in not doing these little people any more harm.” Baum was also influenced by his mother-in-law, activist Matilda Joslyn Gage , who convinced him to write down his Oz stories. Gage has been cited as one of the inspirations for Dorothy, and biographers have drawn correlations between Baum's Good Witch and Gage's feminist writings. Other writers have used

1320-576: The North , Dorothy begins looking for it and sees many pathways and roads nearby, (all of which lead in various directions). Thankfully, it doesn't take her too long to spot the one paved with bright yellow bricks. Later in the book, Dorothy and her companions, the Scarecrow , Tin Woodman and Cowardly Lion discover that the road has fallen into disrepair in some parts of the land, having several broken chasms ending at dangerous cliffs with deadly drops. In

1375-664: The Wicked Witch of the East represents the pro-silver movement. When Dorothy is taken to the Emerald Palace before her audience with the Wizard she is led through seven passages and up three flights of stairs, a subtle reference to the Coinage Act of 1873 which started the class conflict in America." Ruth Kassinger, in her book Gold: From Greek Myth to Computer Chips , purports that "The Wizard symbolizes bankers who support

1430-420: The character Tip describes the city as being built by the Wizard, the Scarecrow later explains that the Wizard had usurped the crown of Pastoria , the former king of the city, and from the Wizard the crown had passed to him. The book quickly concerns itself with finding the rightful heir to the crown of the city. Princess Ozma remained the king's heir, though both she and the original king were transformed to

1485-463: The city on the Hotel del Coronado , where he supposedly did much of his writing. Scholars who interpret The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as a political allegory see the Emerald City as a metaphor for Washington, D.C. , and unsecured " greenback " paper money. In this reading of the book, the city's illusory splendor and value are compared with the value of fiat money , which also has value only because of

1540-418: The city, but in effect makes everything appear green when it is, in fact, "no more green than any other city". This is yet another " humbug " created by the Wizard . One scene of the Emerald City is of particular note in the development of Oz: Dorothy sees rows of shops that sell green articles of every variety and a vendor who sells green lemonade that children buy with green pennies. This contrasts with

1595-402: The clouds to rule over this land." Baum held strong racial views towards Native American peoples, arguing for their genocidal extermination in two editorials published in his newspaper, The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer , in 1890 and 1891. However, some commenters have argued certain passages in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz , published almost a decade later, reflect greater nuance with regard to

1650-469: The curtain pulling the levers to make them move (Baum was the editor of the trade magazine read by window dressers ). Additional allegories have been developed, without claims that they were originally intended by Baum. The text has been treated as a theosophical allegory. In a 2020 edition of the Rose Croix Journal , an article written by Timothy J. Ryan argues The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

1705-409: The cyclone: it was used in the 1890s as a metaphor for a political revolution that would transform the drab country into a land of color and unlimited prosperity. It was also used by editorial cartoonists of the 1890s to represent political upheaval. Dorothy would represent the goodness and innocence of human kind. Other putative allegorical devices of the book include the Wicked Witch of the West as

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1760-425: The day. Biographers report that Baum had been a political activist in the 1890s with a special interest in the money question of gold and silver ( bimetallism ), and the illustrator William Wallace Denslow was a full-time editorial cartoonist for a major daily newspaper. For the 1902 Broadway production Baum inserted explicit references to prominent political characters such as then-president Theodore Roosevelt . In

1815-568: The end of the book, we learn the road's history; unlike in the Disney prequel film Oz the Great and Powerful (2013), the Emerald City and yellow brick road did not exist prior to Oz's arrival. When Oscar Diggs arrived in Oz via hot-air balloon that had been swept away in a storm, the people of the land were convinced he was a great "Wizard" who had finally come to fulfil Oz's long-awaited prophecy. Since

1870-520: The events of The Wizard of Oz , its described as "Oz, seen through the eyes of Raymond Chandler ". The Green Zone in Baghdad is sometimes ironically and cynically referred to as the Emerald City . Yellow brick road The yellow brick road is a central element in the 1900 children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by American author L. Frank Baum . The road also appears in

1925-411: The gold standard and oppose adding silver to it... Only Dorothy's silver slippers can take her home to Kansas," meaning that by Dorothy not realizing that she had the silver slippers the whole time, Dorothy, or "the westerners", never realized they already had a viable currency of the people. Historian Quentin Taylor sees additional metaphors, including: Taylor also claimed a sort of iconography for

1980-469: The later description of Oz, in which money does not feature. Interpreters have argued that the Wizard may have introduced money into the city, but this is not in the text itself. In this book, the Wizard also describes the city as having been built for the Wizard within a few years after he arrived. It was he who decreed that everyone in the Emerald City must wear green eyeglasses, since the first thing he noticed about Oz after he landed in his hot air balloon

2035-539: The onset of the industrial order . Some claim, for instance, that it is 1890s Chicago , which rose on a plain, subsuming unto itself much of the Midwestern creative aspiration so that it becomes the Garden of the West that has long struggled in its prairies. This interpretation focused on the affirmative descriptions of the city, which reveal the benefits and rewards of the new culture, particularly urban abundance and

2090-551: The original Oz book, also incorporated elements that may have been inspired by the White City. Denslow was familiar with the exposition as he had been hired to sketch and document it for the Chicago Times . Likewise, the quick building of the real-life White City, in less than a year, may have contributed to the quick construction of the Emerald City in the first book. Others believe Baum may have based his description of

2145-406: The plight of Native Americans, containing allegorical references to their treatment. In particular, an incident in which Dorothy and company are accosted by “policemen of the forest” and break a cow's leg and a village church while passing through a strange land “painted in the brightest colors” is suggested to refer to the 1854 Grattan Massacre , precipitated by a missing cow, and the suppression of

2200-450: The recent fall of Oz's mortal King Pastoria , and the mysterious disappearance of his baby daughter Princess Ozma , Oscar immediately proclaimed himself as Oz's new dominant ruler and had his people build the road as well as the city in his honor. In the second Oz book, The Marvelous Land of Oz , Tip and his companion Jack Pumpkinhead , likewise follow a yellow brick road to reach Emerald City while traveling from Oz's northern quadrant,

2255-462: The road before embarking on her journey, as the tornado did not deposit her farmhouse directly in front of it as in the 1939 film. The following is an excerpt from the third chapter of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz , in which Dorothy sets off to see the Wizard: There were several roads nearby, but it did not take Dorothy long to find the one paved with yellow bricks. Within a short time, she

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2310-658: The road). Hugh Rockoff suggested the City of Oz earns its name from the abbreviation of ounces "Oz" in which gold and silver are measured. The thesis achieved considerable popular interest and elaboration by many scholars in history, economics and other fields, but that thesis has been challenged. Certainly the 1902 musical version of Oz , written by Baum, was for an adult audience and had numerous explicit references to contemporary politics, though in these references Baum seems just to have been "playing for laughs". The 1902 stage adaptation mentioned, by name, President Theodore Roosevelt and other political celebrities. For example,

2365-630: The ruler of all Oz. The story reverted to the Wizard's having built the city in Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz (1908), with the four witches having usurped the king's power before the Wizard's arrival. The only allusions to the original conception of Emerald City among the Oz sequels appeared in The Road to Oz (1909), where the Little Guardian of the Gates wears green spectacles—though he

2420-455: The same evidence to lead to precisely opposite allegorical interpretations. Apart from intentional symbolism, scholars have speculated on the sources of Baum's ideas and imagery. The "man behind the curtain" could be a reference to automated store window displays of the sort famous at Christmas season in big city department stores; many people watching the fancy clockwork motions of animals and mannequins thought there must be an operator behind

2475-452: The several sequel Oz books such as The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904) and The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1913). The road's most notable depiction is in the classic 1939 MGM musical film The Wizard of Oz , loosely based on Baum's first Oz book. In the novel's first edition, the road is mostly referred to as the "Road of Yellow Bricks ". In the original story and in later films based on it such as The Wiz (1978), Dorothy Gale must find

2530-468: The state of Kansas have been designated "the yellow brick road". Dallas, Texas makes a claim that Baum once stayed at a downtown hotel during his newspaper career (located near what is now the Triple Underpass) at a time when the streets were paved with wooden blocks of Bois D'Arc also known as Osage Orange. Supposedly, after a rainstorm the sun came out and he saw a bright yellow brick road from

2585-576: The supposed "Good Witch Glinda " took advantage of the Witch of the East's sudden and unintentional death. Seizing on an opportunity for all-power, Glinda used the innocent Dorothy to unseat the remaining powers of the land, the Witch of the West and the Wizard of Oz, leaving herself as undisputed master of all four corners of Oz: North, East, West and South (and presumably the Emerald City). She even showed her truest "Machiavellian brilliance" by allowing

2640-675: The window of his room. Two direct, published references to the origin of the yellow brick road came from Baum's own descendants: his son Frank Joslyn Baum in To Please A Child and the other by Roger S. Baum , the great-grandson of L. Frank Baum who stated, "Most people don't realize that the Wizard of Oz was written in Chicago, and the Yellow Brick Road was named after winding cobblestone roads in Holland, Michigan, where great-grandfather spent vacations with his family." The Vision Oz Fund

2695-496: The yellow brick road in ruins by the hands of the evil Nome King who also conquered the Emerald City. In the end, it is presumed that after she defeats him and saves the city and its citizens, the road is restored as well. There are various accounts of what inspired the yellow brick road. One account says it is a brick road in Peekskill, New York , where L. Frank Baum attended Peekskill Military Academy . Other accounts say it

2750-536: Was established in November 2009 to raise funds that will be used to help increase the awareness, enhancement, and further development of Oz-related attractions and assets in Wamego, Kansas . The first fundraiser is under way and includes selling personalized engraved yellow bricks, which will become part of the permanent walkway (aka "The Yellow Brick Road") in downtown Wamego. In 2019, a commemorative yellow brick road

2805-410: Was how green and pleasant the land was. In The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904), the characters are required to wear the glasses at first, but, contrast to the preceding Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), halfway through the book, no more eyeglasses appear and no more mention is made of the brilliance, but the city is still described as green. This is continued throughout the series. Although at one point

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2860-472: Was inspired by a road paved with yellow bricks near Holland, Michigan , where Baum spent summers. Ithaca, New York , also makes a claim for being Frank Baum's inspiration. He opened a road tour of his musical, The Maid of Arran , in Ithaca, and he met his future wife Maud Gage Baum while she was attending Cornell University . At the time, yellow bricks paved local roads. Portions of U.S. Route 54 within

2915-415: Was installed in Chicago's Humboldt Park at the site of L. Frank Baum's 1899 residence. Political interpretations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Political interpretations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz include treatments of the modern fairy tale (written by L. Frank Baum and first published in 1900) as an allegory or metaphor for the political, economic, and social events of America in

2970-421: Was merely the predominant color while buildings were also decorated with gold, and people added other colors to their costumes. In the first book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), the walls are green, but the city itself is not. However, when they enter, everyone in the Emerald City is made to wear green-tinted spectacles . This is explained as an effort to protect their eyes from the "brightness and glory" of

3025-493: Was walking briskly toward the Emerald City ; her Silver Shoes tinkling merrily on the hard, yellow roadbed. The road is first introduced in the third chapter of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz . The road begins in the heart of the eastern quadrant called Munchkin Country in the Land of Oz . It functions as a guideline that leads all who follow it, to the road's ultimate destination—the imperial capital of Oz called Emerald City that

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