Why is New York nicknamed “The Big Apple?”?
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 circa 1940 told you he had a gig in the “Big Apple,” you knew he had an engagement to play in the most coveted venue of all, Manhattan, where the audience was the biggest, hippest, and most appreciative in the country.