Baghdad-on-the-Hudson (NY Sun, 1903?)

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

   "Baghdad-on-the-Hudson" was O. Henry's nickname for New York City.  It's not used much now in 2003.  (Can't figure out why.)  The nickname/story appeared in THE FOUR MILLION (1906).
   From ProQuest's LOS ANGELES TIMES:


   13 July 1903, LOS ANGELES TIMES, pg. 8:
_NEW YORK, PAST AND PRESENT_
   The great city of New York recently celebrated its 250th anniversary as a municipality.  The occasion brought out a great deal of interesting and picturesque comment, not only from the press of that city, but from newspapers all over the country.  The New York Tribune aptly refers to the "New Amsterdam" of today as "the largest American city, the largest Irish city, the largest Jewish city, one of the largest German cities, and the most cosmopolitan city in the world."
(...)(Col. 2--ed.)
   In a rather magniloquent discourse on the New York of today, the New York Sun thus breaks forth:
   "Here is the Babylon and Bagdad of the West, the capital of pleasure, the chief city of the pride of life, the magic magnetic island, that draws all the talent, and fascinates all the adventurers.


(No "Big Apple" here, of course--ed.)