The birth of the Big Apple: First mention of New York’s enduring nickname dates back 100 years

Back in 1921, when Babe Ruth was in right field for the Yankees and Mayor John Hylan in City Hall, a horse-racing writer for the New York Morning Telegraph overheard a Louisiana chat between two Black stablehands.

The pair mentioned an upcoming trip from New Orleans to New York — the Big Apple, as they called it.

On May 3, 1921, cub reporter John J. Fitz Gerald used the term in print for the first time, making Monday the 100th anniversary of the now-ubiquitous nickname for the five boroughs, according to a pair of dogged researchers.

“Fitz Gerald used lowercase letters, with ‘the big apple’ in quotes,” said Gerald Cohen, who eventually teamed up with partner Barry Popik in tracking down all the details. “This specifically referred to the New York racetracks.

“And back then, if you wanted to refer to New York by its nickname, it was ‘Gotham’ or ‘Li’l Old New York.’ But not the Big Apple.”

Oddly enough, Cohen said his interest in the subject was piqued by a 1988 letter to advice columnist Dear Abby inquiring about the origin of the city’s now-familiar nom de tourism.

“When she asked readers for info, I knew she was talking to me,” recounted Cohen, a Manhattan native now living in Rolla, Mo. — population 20,000. “Call it a hobby. A passionate hobby.”

And so began his search for the origin of the term resurrected decades later by Charles Gillett as president of the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau. In 1991, Cohen’s book on the origins of the expression was published, with one reviewer later noting the author “lays out the evidence in painstaking detail.“

The nickname’s resurrection was actually tied to the city’s disintegrating image of the ‘70s, with crime on the rise and a looming fiscal crisis. New York became a late-night television punch line, with Johnny Carson landing nightly jabs like this one: “New York is an exciting town where something is happening all the time — most unsolved.”

Jazz aficionado Gillett seized on the term that he recalled as a staple of conversations among Harlem musicians of the ‘30s, who hailed a New York gig as playing the “Big Apple.”

Voila! The two words would soon echo around the globe as New York rebranded.

In his 1995 obituary, The New York Times noted Gillett “was credited with creating the Big Apple tourism campaign.” But Cohen stands by Fitz Gerald as the man who first connected the nickname to the city in print.

“He was the one who got it started,” says Cohen, now 80. “It spread within horse racing, and to films, and became quite well known in the 1930s. Then it went into obscurity. I grew up in New York, and never heard it.”

Cohen said as much in a 1997 letter published by Abigail Van Buren in her column, with Dear Abby offering her thanks.

Cohen gives massive kudos to his investigative partner Popik, a collaborator when an updated version of his book came out in 2011. The pair still hope for some acknowledgment of Fitz Gerald, buried in an unmarked upstate grave 160 miles north of Belmont Park, and the two anonymous stablehands.

“It would be nice if they could get some recognition,” said Cohen of the latter duo. “Who knows? Somebody might have records down in New Orleans. This is one more instance of the African-American influence on the language.”