Why is N.Y. called the big the big apple?
When and how did New York City come to be called “The Big Apple’?” This is by far the most frequently asked question—and the most hotly debated—to reach our New York History Hotline. There are actually several answers (nothing about New York City is simple, after all). All are explained below, with the last word going, appropriately enough, to SNYCH’s own Joe Zito, one of this burg’s finest purveyors of high-quality urban history. A veteran both of New York City’s inimitable press corps and its police department, Joe—happily for us—is able to provide authoritative first-hand testimony on this topic. Read on! Various accounts have traced the “Big Apple” expression to Depression-Era sidewalk apple vendors, a Harlem night club, and a popular 1930s dance known as the “Big Apple.” One fanciful version even links the name with a notorious 19th-century procuress! In fact, it was the jazz musicians of the 1930s and ‘40s who put the phrase into more or less general circulation. If a jazzman cir
