A plaque remaining from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem.

Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.

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Entry from June 25, 2005
FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) & ICE (Intellectual, Cultural, Educational)
"FIRE" stands for "Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate." It's New York City's largest industry. It's not known who first coined the "FIRE" acronym (cited in print since at least 1982).

"ICE" (Intellectual, Cultural and Educational) is even newer and is not yet established. The "ICE" acronym followed "FIRE." The term "ICE" can also stand for "Income, Credit and Equity."


21 October 1982, Washington Post, "New York, Once Nearly Bankrupt, Rides Manhattan's Boom" by Joyce Wadler, pg. A2:
In recent years, 160,000 jobs have been added in the "fire" section: finance, insurance, and real estate.

12 October 1986, New York Times, "Turmoil Ahead in Real State" by Philip S. Gutis, pg. NJ15:
Though real estate is one segment of the industry group known as "F.I.R.E.," for finance, insurance and real estate, which has been an important growth area in the most recent economic expansion, when taken alone it is a relatively small area of employment.

7 December 1988, New York Times, "Real Estate" by Richard D. Lyons, pg. D20:
"We are seeing a strong demand for space from the so-called FIRE group of companies - those involved in finance, insurance and real estate," Mr. Looloian said.

20 October 1998, New York Times, "In Terms of Jobs, A One-Street Town" by Charles R. Morris, pg. A31:
A comparison of city employment just before the 1987 market crash and at the end of 1997 does show a slight drop in the concentration of jobs in the sector of the economy that is most sensitive to stock market fluctuations - the so-called FIRE sector: finance, insurance and real estate.

16 December 2004, New York Daily News, "On New York" by Richard Schwartz, pg. 43, col. 1:
The future of New York City is FIRE and ICE.
(...)
Start with FIRE. The acronym refers to what has long been the core of the city's economy: Finance, Insurance and Real Estate.
(...)
But over the last decade or so, the traditional FIRE has been eclipsed a bit by a potent new dynamic in the city's ever-transforming economy - ICE, which stands for all things Intellectual, Cultural and Educational.

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New York CityBanking/Finance/Insurance • Saturday, June 25, 2005 • Permalink


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