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.”

It was the jazz musicians of the 1930s and ‘40s who put the phrase into more or less general circulation. Even before that, in the 1920s, John Fitz Gerald started a horse racing column called “Around the Big Apple”, but, he also admitted that “he had heard the name from the Black stable boys who followed the horses to the small quarter-mile tracks in New Orleans and all over the East and the Middle West. They were so glad now to come to New York, where the big money was. The city was so huge to them and so full of opportunity, that they called it the Big Apple.” (Joe Zito)

The term had grown stale and was generally forgotten by the 1970s. In the 1970s, the city was bankrupt, experiencing an increase in crime rates and strikes - not exactly an appealing attraction for tourists. Then Charles Gillett, head of the New York Convention & Visitors Bureau, got the idea of reviving the name. So, they enlisted the help of advertising agency Wells Rich Greene and graphic designer Milton Glaser to work on the campaign. In a taxi on the way to a meeting for the campaign, Glaser drew a doodle to illustrate the “I Love New York” slogan that had been conceived by the marketers. It was a handwritten doodle N, a heart shape and NY, all in a line. The team loved the idea and asked Glaser to develop it.

The city's industrial-strength “I ♥ NY” campaign was launched in 1971, complete with a cheerful Big Apple logo in innumerable forms. The campaign won Gillett a Tourism Achievement award in 1994. Today, the New York State Empire State Development (ESD), New York’s chief economic development agency, holds the trademark to the “I Love New York” logo, and licenses its use. Official merchandise generates more than $30 million a year.

Source: http://salwenpr.com/apple.html

Photos:
Milton Glaser (Image credit: Catalina Kulczar)
Milton Glaser I ♥ NY concept sketch 1976 @moma.org

Location: The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
USA, 11 West 53 Street, Manhattan, New York