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 February 16, 2008
Gingerbread City (Waxahachie nickname)

Waxahachie (the county seat of Ellis County) has many well-kept Victorian (pre-1900) homes. The “gingerbread” architecture is celebrated in the city’s annual June “Gingerbread Trail,” first conducted in 1968. By at least 1975, a billboard announced that “Waxahachie is the Gingerbread City.”
     
     
Wikipedia: Waxahachie, Texas
Waxahachie is a city in Ellis County, Texas, United States. The population was 21,426 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Ellis County.
(...)
Nickname: “The Gingerbread City”
   
Handbook of Texas Online
WAXAHACHIE, TEXAS. Waxahachie, the county seat of Ellis County, is on Interstate Highway 35E and U.S. Highway 287, thirty miles south of Dallas in the central part of the county. The name comes from an Indian word meaning “cow” or “buffalo” and is also the name of a local creek
(...)
Waxahachie has been nicknamed the Gingerbread City because of the architecture of several beautiful homes and buildings remaining from before 1900. A yearly tour known as the Gingerbread Trail includes Victorian-style houses with gingerbread carpentry, the most popular architectural style, as well as combinations with Queen Ann’s, Classic Renaissance, or Roman Doric revival. The red sandstone and granite Victorian courthouse, designed by James Riely Gordon and completed in 1897, graces the town’s square. The Nicholas P. Sims Library (1905) and the octagonally shaped Chautauqua Auditorium (1902) are examples of the 300 Waxahachie structures listed on the National Register of Historic Places. 
   
Gingerbread Trail Home Tour
40th Annual Tour of Homes  
Arts & Crafts Fair  
Gingerbread Fun Run / Walk
Plein Air Painting  
“Paint Historic Waxahachie”
June 7th & 8th, 2008
Waxahachie, Texas
Sponsored by the Ellis County Museum, Inc. 
 
29 March 1969, Dallas (TX) Morning News, “Spring Tours, Trails,” section E, pg. 11:
June
GINGERBREAD TRAIL TOUR OF HOMES, Waxahachie, June 7-8. Sidewalk art and antiques on sale.
   
1 February 1975, Dallas (TX) Morning News, “Things Do Happen in Looneyville!” by Frank X. Tolbert, section D, pg. 3:
A HOUSTON woman, Mrs. Frances Parker, wrote me: “I could almost smell gingerbread when I saw that billboard on the highway near Waxahachie the other day. Is this town with the curious name famous for its bakeries?”
 
I wrote Mrs. Parker that she also had a curious, spontaneous reaction to that billboard which proclaims that “Waxahachie is the Gingerbread City.” Actually, the reference in the sign is to the “gingerbread” decor and carvings that grace the exteriors of many of the lovingly-kept old dwellings in Waxy.
(...)
Photo of road sign:
Waxahachie
is the
Gingerbread city
...see why, exit 187
   
14 September 1980, New York (NY) Times, “What’s Doing in Fort Worth” by Peter Applebome, pg. XX5:
Another small town worth a look is Waxahachie, 38 miles south of Fort Worth on I-35. Waxahachie is known as the Gingerbread City, and a drive around town reveals why.
 
Waxahachie (the name means Buffalo Creek) contains more than 170 gingerbread and Victorian homes—20 percent of Texas’s entries on the National Register of Historic Places. Nearly all of these ornate homes were built near the end of the 19th century; they are maintained in magnificent condition.
 
(OCLC WorldCat record)
Title: Gingerbread, and all the trimmings :
a cookbook /
Corp Author(s): Waxahachie Junior Service League, Inc. 
Publication: Waxahachie, Tex. : The League,
Year: 1987
Description: 270 p. : Ill. ; 24 cm.
 
15 May 1997, Park Cities People (Dallas, TX),  “Waxahachie’s homes are 30 miles and 100 years away” by Nancy Cornell, pg. 15, col. 1:
Its sobriquet, “gingerbread city,” derives from the ornate trim dressing its turn-of-the-century architecture. Many Waxahachie homes do resemble colorful, intricately iced cakes. The Gingerbread Trail, held annually the first weekend in June since 1968, allows visitors to peek inside selected gingerbread-adorned Victorian beauties.
 
(OCLC WorldCat record)
Title: Waxahachie in pen & ink :
an illustrated guide to the gingerbread city /
Author(s): Brewer, Kent C. 
Publication: [Waxahachie, Tex.] : Resource Solutions Print. & Graphics,
Edition: 1st ed.
Year: 2002
Description: 1 v. (unpaged) : chiefly ill., 1 map ; 15 x 23 cm.
 
Google Books
Texas
Off the Beaten Path
by June Naylor
Guilford, CT; Globe Pequot
2006
Pg. 176:
Waxahachie (WOCK-uh-i-hatch-ee) is a charming Victorian town built on the rich cattle and cotton businesses here at the turn of the twentieth century. Some 170 of the original, ornate homes with extensive gingerbread detail survive, giving the community its Gingerbread City nickname.

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Texas (Lone Star State Dictionary) • Saturday, February 16, 2008 • Permalink


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