On this day in New York · May 3, 1921
A Racing Column Names the Big Apple
Long before tourism boards and t-shirt stands got hold of it, New York's most famous nickname started as racetrack slang, slipped into print by a turf writer who liked the sound of it.
The facts
- Date
- May 3, 1921
- Publication
- New York Morning Telegraph
- Writer
- John J. Fitz Gerald (1893-1963), turf editor
- Origin of the phrase
- Overheard from two Black stable hands at the New Orleans Fair Grounds, a conversation historian Barry Popik traced to January 1920
On May 3, 1921, John J. Fitz Gerald, a horse-racing writer for the New York Morning Telegraph, put the phrase "the big apple" into print to describe New York in a column about a horse named Tippity Witchet heading north for the racing season. Fitz Gerald had picked up the phrase from two Black stable hands he overheard at the New Orleans Fair Grounds, who used it as shorthand for the big-time New York tracks every horseman dreamed of racing at. He kept using it in his column, eventually titled "Around the Big Apple," through the 1920s and 1930s, and the name stuck to the whole city long after anyone remembered the racetrack. Fitz Gerald covered the turf for the Morning Telegraph from 1912 to 1940 and later worked in public relations for racetracks in New Jersey and Florida.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
-
J. P. Smith, with Tippity Witchet and others of the L. T. Bauer string, is scheduled to start for "the big apple" to-morrow after a most prosperous Spring campaign at Bowie and Havre de Grace.
John J. Fitz Gerald, New York Morning Telegraph, May 3, 1921
Source: Wikipedia -
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.
John J. Fitz Gerald, "Around the Big Apple," New York Morning Telegraph, February 18, 1924
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
The nickname sat around half-forgotten for decades until New York's tourism bureau revived it during the 1970s fiscal crisis to sell a city everyone else was writing off, proof that even a city's identity can start as an overheard phrase from people the record barely names.
Sources
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