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Question
#14888. angel
asks:
Why is New York called 'The Big Apple'?
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Terryproantrim
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According to Nigel Rees book of 'Phrase and Fable,' The Big Apple was the name of a jazz club in Harlem in the 1930's. 'Are you playing the Big Apple' was a common phrase among jazz musicans, and gradually crept into the language as meaning New York.
Dec 10 01, 1:49 AM
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Senior Moments
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John J. FitzGerald, born in 1893, was a horse-racing writer for The Morning Telegraph in the 1920's and was the first to popularize the term 'The Big Apple.' While on assignment in New Orleans, FitzGerald overheard African-American stablehands refer to New York City race-courses as 'The Big Apple.' FitzGerald loved the term so much that he named his racing column 'Around The Big Apple.' The title to the column became synonymous with the New York City racing scene.
A decade later many jazz musicians began calling the City 'The Big Apple' to refer to New York City (especially Harlem) as the jazz capital of the world. Soon the nickname became synonymous with New York City and its cultural diversity. In the early 1970's the name played an important role in reviving New York's tourist economy through a campaign led by the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau. Today the nickname 'The Big Apple,' which replaced 'Fun City,' is the international description of our city and is synonymous with the cultural and tourist attractions of New York City.
Therefore, it is only fitting that the southwest corner of West 54th Street and Broadway, the corner on which John J. FitzGerald resided from 1934 to 1963, be designated 'Big Apple Corner.'
 http://www.ci.nyc.ny.us/html/om/html/97/sp082-97.html
Dec 10 01, 10:20 AM
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Son of The Household Cavalry
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Section 1 says:
The phrase 'The Big Apple' referring to New York City was first used in a 1909 book, The Wayfarer in New York edited by Edward S. Martin. In a metaphor explaining the sentiment in the Midwest that the city receives more than a fair share of the nation's wealth, he explains: 'New York (was) merely one of the fruits of that great tree whose roots go down in the Mississippi Valley, and whose branches spread from one ocean to the other. (But) the big apple (New York) gets a disproportionate share of the national sap.' (Irving Lewis Allen, City in Slang (Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 62)
'The Big Apple' took on a different connotation when it was made popular in the 1920's by the New York Morning Telegraph sports writer John J. FitzGerald. He heard it used by African-American stable hands at the racetrack in New Orleans when referring to New York's racing scene which they considered the 'big time.' FitzGerald liked the phrase so much he titled his racing column 'Around the Big Apple.' In the introduction to his column from the February 18, 1924 issue FitzGerald writes: 'The Big Apple. The dream of every lad that ever threw a leg over a thoroughbred and the goal of all horsemen. There's only one Big Apple. That's New York.'
Mon Dec 10 04:37:52 CST 2001
Mar 16 02, 2:30 PM
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Son of The Household Cavalry
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Section 2 says:
The phrase was most widely used by jazz musicians during the 1930's and 40's. Again it was used as a metaphor for achieving success. Playing New York, in particular the theaters of Harlem and on Broadway, was the ultimate aspiration. When playing away from home, they were out in the branches ('the sticks') but when they were in New York they were playing 'The Big Apple.'
The phrase fell out of favor during the 50's and 60's but was revived in the 1970's by the New York Convention and Visitor's Bureau's campaign to attract tourists to the city. Using a red apple as their symbol, they promoted New York as the Big Apple, and it is now an internationally known nickname.
In 1997, with the help of Big Apple advocate Barry Popik, the City Council acknowledged John J. FitzGerald's contribution to New York City lore by naming the southwest corner of W. 54th Street and Broadway in Manhattan, the corner where FitzGerald lived from 1934 to 1963, 'Big Apple Corner.' A plaque was placed on the building by the Historic Landmarks Preservation Center to commemorate him.
Mon Dec 10 04:41:53 CST 2001
Mar 16 02, 2:33 PM
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Son of The Household Cavalry
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Section 3 says:
A slightly more colourful version is as follows (two parts as the amount of text we can use appears to be limited)
In the early years of the nineteenth century, refugees from war-torn Europe began arriving in New York in great numbers. Many were remnants of the crumbling French aristocracy, forced to seek refuge abroad from the dread 'Monsieur Guillotine.' Arriving here without funds or friends, many of these were forced to survive, as one contemporary put it, 'by their wits or worse.'
One of these, arriving in late 1803 or early 1804, was Mlle. Evelyn Claudine de Saint-Évremond. Daughter of a noted courtier, wit, and littérateur, and herself a favorite of Marie Antoinette, Evelyn was by all accounts remarkably attractive: beautiful, vivacious, and well-educated, and she was soon a society favorite. For reasons never disclosed, however, a planned marriage the following year to John Hamilton, son of the late Alexander Hamilton, was called off at the last minute. Soon after, with support from several highly placed admirers, she established a salon -- in fact, it appears to have been an elegantly furnished bordello -- in a substantial house that still stands at 142 Bond Street, then one of the city's most exclusive residential districts.
Evelyn's establishment quickly won, and for several decades maintained, a formidable reputation as the most entertaining and discreet of the city's many 'temples of love,' a place not only for lovemaking, but also for elegant dinners, high-stakes gambling, and witty conversation. The girls, many of them fresh arrivals from Paris or London, were noted for their beauty and bearing. More than a few of them, apparently, were actually able to secure wealthy husbands from among the establishment's clientele.
Mon Dec 10 04:45:07 CST 2001
Mar 16 02, 2:35 PM
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Son of The Household Cavalry
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Section 4 says:
When New Yorkers insisted on anglicizing her name to 'Eve,' Evelyn apparently found the biblical reference highly amusing, and for her part would refer to the temptresses in her employ as 'my irresistable apples.' The young men-about-town soon got into the habit of referring to their amorous adventures as 'having a taste of Eve's Apples.' This knowing phrase established the speaker as one of the 'in' crowd, and at the same time made it clear he had no need to visit one of the coarser establishments that crowded nearby Mercer Street, for instance. The enigmatic reference in Philip Hone's famous diary to 'Ida, sweet as apple cider' (October 4, 1838) has been described as an oblique reference to a visit to what had by then become a notorious but cherished civic institution. The rest, as they say, is etymological history.
The sexual connotation of the word 'apple' was well known in New York and throughout the country until around World War I. The Gentleman's Directory of New York City, a privately published (1870) guide to the town's 'houses of assignation,' confidently asserted that 'in freshness, sweetness, beauty, and firmness to the touch, New York's apples are superior to any in the New World or indeed the Old.' Meanwhile, various 'apple' catch-phrases -- 'the Apple Tree,' 'the Real Apple,' etc. -- were used as synonyms for New York City itself, which boasted (if that is the term) more houses of ill repute per capita than any other major U.S. municipality.
William Jennings Bryan, though hardly the first to denounce New York as a sink of iniquity, appears to have been the first to use the 'apple' epithet in public discourse, branding the city, in a widely reprinted 1892 campaign speech, as 'the foulest Rotten Apple on the Tree of decadent Federalism.'
Mon Dec 10 04:47:34 CST
Mar 16 02, 2:41 PM
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Son of The Household Cavalry
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Section 5 says:
The double-entendre -- i.e., as a reference to both political and sexual corruption -- would have been well understood by voters of the time.
The term 'Big Apple' or 'The Apple' had already passed into general use as a sobriquet for New York City by 1907, when one guidebook included the comment, 'Some may think the Apple is losing some of its sap.' Interestingly, the phrase had also become pretty well 'sanitized' in the process, thanks to a vigorous campaign mounted just after the turn of the century by the Apple Marketing Board, a trade group based in upstate Cortland, New York. Alarmed by sharply declining sales, the Association launched what some believe to be the earliest example of what would now be called a 'product positioning campaign.'
By devising and energetically promoting such slogans as 'An apple a day keeps the Doctor away' and 'as American as apple pie!' the A.M.B. was able to successfully 'rehabilitate' the apple as a popular comestible, free of unsavory associations. It is believed that the group also distributed apples to the poor for sale on the city's streets during the Great Depression (1930-38). No convincing documentary evidence has been produced to support this, however.
-- Society for New York City History, Education Committee
Mon Dec 10 04:50:31 CST 2001
[Reposted for credit - McG]
Mar 16 02, 2:43 PM
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