Story By: Lee Bullen,Sub Editor: Joseph Golder,Agency: Central European News
This ‘yellow brick road’ is being built in Chicago where author L. Frank Baum wrote ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’ in 1899.
More of a yellow-brick pavement than a road, the 200-foot path is being built near Humboldt Park in Chicago in the Midwestern US state of Illinois.
The site commemorates the area of Humboldt Boulevard where American author L. Frank Baum wrote ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’ in 1899 with the children’s book published the following year.
Today, the area is home to nine units of affordable rental housing that were built in the 1980s.
The pavement is expected to be finished this week with a mural planned for completion by early next year to coincide with the centenary of the book’s release.
Joy Aruguete, CEO of Bickerdike Redevelopment, the non-profit community organisation that manages the housing development, said: “It’s leaning over, and we didn’t think it was enough to celebrate L. Frank Baum, his writing and a movie that is probably the most-seen movie ever made.”
She added: “There’s no place like home.”
The ‘yellow brick road’ is on the corner of Humboldt Boulevard and Wabansia Avenue and includes a tiled mosaic by Chicago artist Hector Duarte that reads ‘There’s No Place Like Home’.
The author and his wife Maud, together with their four sons, lived in Chicago from 1891 to 1910.
Baum wrote the classic children’s novel at the house, which was later demolished although it is not known when, and went on to write 13 other books in the Oz series.
He also wrote 41 other novels, 83 short stories, over 200 poems, and at least 42 scripts in his lifetime.
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