Here is the occasional feature from the Center for the Urban Environment (CUE).
In this submission, Fronsy Thurman takes a close look at the history of local
favorite, the Newtown Pippin.

Every Saturday, I make the 20 block trek to our neighborhood farmers
market. Each week is an adventure, depending on what is in season. Lately, on
the walk over, we have been talking apples. My friends adore the Honeycrisp
– a tasty apple with a sweet, almost banana-like flavor, which has become
wildly popular among farmers market shoppers and beyond. I, however, preferring
a good story with my fruit, pledge allegiance to the New York’s own,
Newtown Pippin

The Newtown Pippin originated as a random
seedling, or “pippin” (not a grafted tree) along the swampy banks
of Newtown Creek in the early eighteenth century—along what is now one of
the most polluted waterways in North America. The apples were first picked in
1730 on Gershom Moore’s Newtown farm, right on the Brooklyn-Queens border.
Decades of excessive cutting exhausted the original tree, which reputedly died
in 1805, but its legacy was just beginning.

Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson cultivated
the Newtown Pippin. While in Paris, Jefferson wrote to James Madison,
“They have no apple here to compare with our Newtown Pippin.”
Benjamin Franklin imported barrels of them during a stay in London. In 1838, an
American ambassador’s gift of Pippins to Queen Victoria caused such a stir
at the palace that the Queen lifted the tariff on pippin apples. The Newtown
Pippin made its way down to Virginia in the mid 1700s, where the climate and
black loam of the Blue Ridge produced an outstanding apple. It was here that
the apple acquired its other alias, the Albemarle Pippin, named for Albemarle County,
where the first cuttings were distributed. In the 1970s and 80s, retail chains
consolidated and cut back on apple varieties. After many decades of huge
popularity, the Newtown Pippin was eclipsed by more ubiquitous but arguably
blander Granny Smith

Now for the good part: The New town Pippin is a
compact, light green apple with russeted skin. Russeting is a type of apple
skin which is slightly rough with a green-brown to yellow-brown color. The
flavor is complex, nutty and tart, requiring storage to develop properly. It is
one of the best storing apples, reaching its peak of flavor around January or
February

One hundred years ago, several thousand varieties of
apples were being cultivated. Most commercial apples nowadays come from same
five or six parents, including Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Jonathan, and
McIntosh. The Newtown Pippin is an American heirloom with a rich history and lovely
taste. If you find yourself with the midwinter blues, go down to your local
farmers market and explore the apples, which are as diverse as the city itself

Image source: www.forgotten-ny.com; content
source: David Karp, “It’s Crunch Time for the Venerable
Pippin,” New York Times, October 15, 2008 and http://www.twinleaf.org/articles/pippin.ht

As a
guide to a more sustainable New York City, CUE  is dedicated to educating
individuals about the built and natural environments. For more about our work
visit www.thecue.org.