Big A (Aqueduct Racetrack nickname, 1959)
Aqueduct racetrack is popularly known as “the Big A.” Clark Whelton (a former writer for the Village Voice and member of the mayor’s communications office) told me that he believed that he had found a 1918 “Big A”—earlier than our earliest “Big Apple.”
“The Big Apple” gave birth to “the Big A,” and not the other way around. I spoke to the longtime secretary of the New York Racing Association, and she credited Gene Ward of the New York Daily News with coinage of “the Big A” in the 1950s. She said “the Big Apple” as the nickname for New York City’s racetracks had inspired Ward’s coinage. I sent several letters to the Daily News in the early 1990s, but none were returned. Gene Ward died in 1992.
The full-text New York Times should provide something close to the earliest citation of “the Big A,” if not the first citation itself. The first database hit is in 1959, on the re-opening of a renovated Aqueduct racetrack.
Wikipedia: Aqueduct Racetrack
Aqueduct Racetrack, known as the Big A, is a horse racetrack in the neighborhood of Ozone Park in the New York City borough of Queens.
History
The racetrack opened in 1894 and was rebuilt in 1959, with additional renovations made in 2001 and 2006.
22 April 1959, New York (NY) Post, pg. 62, col. 1:
They’re Off..But Not Running
At Aqueduct-on-the-Subway
By AL BUCK
Feature races are named for either dead horses or dead politicians and the Man O’ War Stakes, announced for the Big A is only the beginning.
The Big A stands for either Aqueduct or apple. It is the brain child of Tom Deegan, a press agent called in to increase the sale of $2 mutuel tickets at the soon to be opened track-on-the-subway. The Big A made its first appearance last night on Toots Shor’s napkins.
29 April 1959, New York (NY) Times, pg. 52:
Advertising: B.B.D.O. Sounds the “Big A”
By CARL SPIELVOGEL
Several weeks before the announcer at the Aqueduct race track sounds the familiar “the horses are on the track,” a $500,000 advertising and promotion program will have started.
The campaign for the new $33,000,000 facility, near Idlewild Airport, will be handled by Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborne, Inc. The theme of the drive will involve the use of a “Big A.”
This stands for Aqueduct. It also relates to the nickname for New York City thoroughbred racing, referred to by improvers of the breed as the “Big Apple.” This is meant to signify big-time racing, as opposed to racing in smaller cities.
Newspapers.com
4 August 1959, Courier-Post (Camden, NJ), “Broadway Bugle” by Toney Betts, pg. 21, col. 1:
It’s not Aqueduct; it’s “The Big A.” Wait until you see the cover of the official program, with the big “A” in aquamarine blue.
The New York Racing Association has paid more than $500,000 to an advertising agency for the “Big A” deal.
Newspapers.com
23 August 1959, Miami (FL) Herald, “Conversation Piece” by Gwen Harrison, pg. 11-E, col. 3:
It’s a good bet you’ll be reading a raft of stuff about the Big A between now and Sept. 14…that’s when Aqueduct Race Track opens in New York…it’s been rebuilt to the tune of 33 million dollars, with $400,000 set aside just for advertising and promotion…the publicity won’t be slanted to the bettor who’ll be there anyway, but will attempt to attract the family group looking fore entertainment and relazation.
Newspapers.com
8 September 1959, Daily News (New York, NY), pg. 47, col. 1 ad:
THE BIG A OPENS SEPT. 14.
9 September 1959, New York (NY) Times, pg. 21 ad:
the big A
Everything about the new Aqueduct is so big that it is referred to as the Big A.