About World’s Largest Apple
Winchester sits in the middle of Virginia apple country, so the city eventually acquired the most direct monument possible: an enormous red apple.
The giant fruit stands on North Braddock Street in front of an antebellum mansion in the downtown area. According to Roadside America, the apple originally served as a float in the Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival before finding a permanent home on the lawn.
The Library of Congress photographed the landmark in 2019 as part of Carol M. Highsmith’s documentation of America and cataloged it as what is claimed to be the world’s largest apple. The photograph captures the basic absurdity perfectly. A highly polished piece of enormous fruit sits outside a historic building as casually as a normal piece of landscaping.
Winchester has celebrated its surrounding apple industry for generations, and giant apples have appeared elsewhere around the region. This one remains the classic. It took a local agricultural identity, enlarged it to roadside scale, and parked it downtown where nobody could possibly miss the point.