A new art installation will be unveiled February 4th that hopes to bring attention to New York City as “The Big Oyster.”
Times Square Arts
Today, most people would know which city you were talking about if you referenced “The Big Apple.”
But a new art installation that will be unveiled in Times Square on February 4th hopes to bring attention to New York City under a different moniker—”The Big Oyster.”
Though the city never officially went by the name, the phrase embraces and recalls New York City’s history as the “Oyster Capital of the World,” when it was famous for its abundant, fresh, and tasty oysters that grew in New York Harbor.
Modern times have seen that era come to an end. Not only have the number of oysters severely declined in the waters around the city, those that survive are no longer recommended to be eaten due to pollution.
The art installation, which will be on display for one month, seeks to tell the rise and fall of New York City as “The Big Oyster” in partnership with a nonprofit organization that is trying to restore and revitalize the population.
New York City: The Oyster Capital of the World
Had “The Big Oyster” been adopted instead of “The Big Apple,” many more might know about the city’s long-gone, passionate love affair with oysters, and its role as the “Oyster Capital of the World.”
Oysters were living in New York City long before the first skyscraper was built. Shell mounds belonging to the Lenape tribe are some of the earliest evidence of human occupation in the area.
Oysters were so abundant in the waters surrounding the city in the 17th century that it prompted the Dutch, who then inhabited the city, to nickname Ellis Island “Little Oyster Island” and Liberty Island “Great Oyster Island.”
Experts suggest that, at one time, more than half the world’s oysters lived in New York Harbor. They became a huge part of the restaurant economy in the 19th century.
“Before the 20th century, when people thought of New York, they thought of oysters,” writes Mark Kurlansky in his book, The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell. “This is what New York was to the world—a great oceangoing port where people ate succulent local oysters from their harbor. Visitors looked forward to trying them. New Yorkers ate them constantly. They also sold them by the millions.”
Unfortunately, water pollution began to impact the quality of the oysters in the 1920s, and over the next decades, they would become too polluted to eat. Sadly, local oysters in New York Harbor are still not recommended to be eaten today.
Though it would take more than oysters to fully clean up local waters, it’s believed that regrowing their population could at least help the cause, thanks to their natural filtration abilities.
The Installation and its Environmental Backing
A new art installation, named Love Ever After, is hoping to bring attention to the oyster, its decline, and the benefits of restoring its population.
From February 4th through March 4th, a 50 square-foot geometrical heart will appear in Times Square, made from four dozen oyster cages.
The piece was designed and made in collaboration with a local non-profit, Billion Oyster Project, that’s trying a number of tactics to regrow oyster beds in and around New York Harbor, including installing oyster cages and even recycling oyster shells from restaurants.
When its month of being on display is over, the art installation will be dismantled and used as part of the rehabilitation effort.
“The pieces of the heart will become oyster reef cages placed around New York City’s shoreline, monitored by hundreds of volunteers as part of Billion Oyster Project’s mission to restore one billion oysters back to New York Harbor by 2035,” the project description explained.
While oysters were once a solid economic and food source for the city, their ability to help clean and filter water is top of mind due to modern-day pollution and the changing climate.
“Oysters and oyster reefs foster biodiversity, filter water, and create a natural storm barrier,” the project explains.
In 1909, a writer used the phrase “Big Apple” as part of a metaphor to describe how the country was growing just like an apple tree, with fruits of different sizes being produced. This was one of many associations that led to New York City being known as “The Big Apple.”
New York City Public Library
How Did New York City Become ‘The Big Apple?’
So why was New York City called “The Big Apple” instead of “The Big Oyster?” Was the city once a big apple farm or something?
The New York Public Library found that the phrase “Big Apple” already had origins in the language in the 1800s as a colloquial phrase.
“‘Throughout the nineteenth century, the term [Big Apple] meant ‘something regarded as the most significant of its kind; an object of desire and ambition,’” the report explains. “‘To ‘bet a big apple’ was ‘to state with supreme assurance; to be absolutely confident of.’”
In the 1840s, the phrase began to appear in advertisements written by the state’s apple farmers. Apples were considered a special gift back then, which may shed some light on the idea of giving your teacher an apple.
In 1909, a writer used the phrase as part of a metaphor to describe how the country was growing just like an apple tree, with fruits of different sizes being produced. New York was the “big apple” of the tree.
The man credited with popularizing the term was a sports journalist who described New York as “The Big Apple” of horseracing in the 1920s. After this, the term was used regularly in a variety of mainstream publications.
In the 1970s, New York City enshrined the nickname in history when it was used as part of an official tourism campaign to attract visitors.
