Big Apple

"The Big Apple" is anicknameforNew York City. It was first popularized in the 1920s byJohn J. Fitz Gerald, a sportswriter for theNew York Morning Telegraph. Its popularity since the 1970s is due in part to a promotional campaign by the New York tourist authorities.
Although the history of "Big Apple" was once thought a mystery,a clearer picture of the term's history has emerged due to the work of historianBarry Popik,and Gerald Cohen of theMissouri University of Science and Technology.A number of false theories had previously existed,including a claim that the term derived from a woman named Eve who ran a brothel in the city.This was subsequently exposed as a hoax.
The earliest known usage of "big apple" appears in the bookThe Wayfarer in New York(1909), in whichEdward Sandford Martinwrites:
William Safireconsidered this the coinage, but because the phrase is not quoted in the text, it is likely that it was used as a metaphor, and not as a nickname for the city.
"The Big Apple" was popularized as a name for New York City byJohn J. Fitz Geraldin a number of horse-racing articles for theNew York Morning Telegraphin the 1920s. The earliest of these was a casual reference on 3 May 1921:
Fitz Gerald referred to the "big apple" frequently thereafter.He explained his use in a column dated February 18, 1924, under the headline "Around the Big Apple":
Fitz Gerald reportedly first heard "The Big Apple" used to describe New York's racetracks by two African American stable hands at the New Orleans Fair Grounds.Using racing records, Popik traced that conversation to January 1920.
In recognition of Fitz Gerald's role in promulgating "The Big Apple" as a nickname for New York City, in 1997 MayorRudy Giulianisigned legislation designating as "Big Apple Corner" the southwest corner of West54th Streetand Broadway, the corner on which John J. Fitz Gerald lived from 1934 to 1963.The Hotel Ameritania also once had a plaque which was installed in 1996, according to Popik, but it was removed during renovations to the building and was lost.
Evidence can also be found in theChicago Defender, an African-American newspaper that had a national circulation. Writing for theDefenderon September 16, 1922, "Ragtime" Billy Tucker used the name "big apple" to refer to New York in a non-horse-racing context:
Tucker had also earlier used "big apple" as a reference toLos Angeles. It is possible that he simply used "big apple" as a nickname for any large city:
By the late 1920s, New York writers other than Fitz Gerald were starting to use "Big Apple", and were using it in contexts other than horse racing."The Big Apple" was a popular songanddancein the 1930s.  Jazz musicians in the 1930s also contributed to the use of the phrase to refer to New York City,specifically to the city andHarlemas the jazz capital of the world.Beside the song and the dance, two nightclubs in the city used "Big Apple" in their names.
Walter Winchelland other writers continued to use the term in the 1940s and early 1950s,but by the late 1950s, if it was known at all,it had come to be considered an outdated nickname for New York.
In the early 1970s, however, duringthe city's fiscal crisis, "People were looking around desperately and some of them seized that old phrase the Big Apple to remind people of when New York had been a strong and powerful city and might become that again," according to the official Manhattan Borough Historian, Dr. Robert Snyder.  It was then that the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau – now"NYC Tourism + Conventions", New York City's official marketing and tourism organization – with the help of theOgilvy & Matheradvertising firm,began to promote the city's "Big Apple" nickname to tourists,under the leadership of its president, Charles Gillett.The campaign was a success,and the nickname has remained popular since then.
Today, the name is used exclusively to refer to New York City, and is used with regularity by journalists and news headline writers across the English-speaking world.