Naming New York (2001)

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

   Greetings from the NYU Bobst Library--the rare library that's opened this weekend.  Everybody's closed tomorrow.
   The Bobst catalogs this book as 2000, and I expect George Thompson to give a full explanation.

NAMING NEW YORK:
MANHATTAN PLACES & HOW THEY GOT THEIR NAMES
by Sanna Feirstein
207 pages, paperback, $16.95
New York University Press (www.nyupress.nyu.edu)
2001

Pg. 118:
BIG APPLE CORNER  For those readers who have always wondered why the city came to be known as the Big Apple, the City Council proceedings of 1997 offer the following explanations.  John J. Fitzgerald, a 1920s journalist specializing in horse racing, had apparently heard African-American stable hands in New Orleans use the term to refer to New York City as having the top-rated racecourses.  Fitzgerald, who lived at 54th Street and Broadway, adopted the name for his column _Around the Big Apple_.  Another possible origin is the jazz world where musicians called New York City the Big Apple as an allusion to its being the jazz capital of the world.

(Gerald Cohen's 1991 book is not one of the "Works Consulted."  I wasn't consulted to correct that last part, but at least it doesn't mention the whores--ed.)