Wizard of Oz, Emerald City = Chicago World’s Fair
Among the millions of attendees at the Chicago World’s Fair was a former poultry famer, crockery salesman, and aspiring writer L. Frank Baum, author of The Wizard of Oz. As Smithsonian journalist Phil Patton (1993) notes, not much “says more about the power of the White City than it inspired the Emerald City. Children’s writer L. Frank Baum never forgot the fair and transmuted it into Oz.”
It’s easy to connect the bright white façade of the Fair’s Court of Honor to Oz. Like the Wizard, the Beaux Arts buildings hid the fact that they were just temporary display buildings, hidden behind a curtain of high-style design, like the Wizard who put on a great show but was a functional mess behind his curtain.
