Tin Pan Alley

For the film, see Tin Pan Alley (film). For the band, see Tin Pan Alley (band). For the play, see The Tin Pan Alley Rag.

Buildings of Tin Pan Alley, 1910[1]
The same buildings, 2011

Tin Pan Alley was a collection of music publishers and songwriters in New York City that dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Originally, it referred to a specific location on West 28th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in the Flower District[2] of Manhattan, as commemorated by a plaque on 28th Street between Broadway and Sixth.[3][4][5][6] Several buildings on Tin Pan Alley are protected as New York City designated landmarks, and the section of 28th Street from Fifth to Sixth Avenue is also officially co-named Tin Pan Alley.

The start of Tin Pan Alley is usually dated to about 1885, when a number of music publishers set up shop in the same district of Manhattan. The end of Tin Pan Alley is less clear cut. Some date it to the start of the Great Depression in the 1930s when the phonograph, radio, and motion pictures supplanted sheet music as the driving force of American popular music, while others consider Tin Pan Alley to have continued into the 1950s when earlier styles of music were upstaged by the rise of rock & roll, which was centered on the Brill Building. Brill Building songwriter Neil Sedaka described his employer as being a natural outgrowth of Tin Pan Alley, in that the older songwriters were still employed in Tin Pan Alley firms while younger songwriters such as Sedaka found work at the Brill Building.[7]

  1. ^ Reublin, Rick (March 2009) "America's Music Publishing Industry: The story of Tin Pan Alley" The Parlor Songs Academy
  2. ^ Dickerson, Aitlin (March 12, 2013) "'Bowery Boys' Are Amateur But Beloved New York Historians" NPR
  3. ^ Mooney Jake (October 17, 2008) "City Room: Tin Pan Alley, Not So Pretty" The New York Times
  4. ^ Gray, Christopher (July 13, 2003) "Streetscapes: West 28th Street, Broadway to Sixth; A Tin Pan Alley, Chockablock With Life, if Not Song" The New York Times
  5. ^ Spencer, Luke J. (ndg) "The Remnants of Tin Pan Alley" Atlas Obscura
  6. ^ Miller, Tom (April 8, 2016) "A Tin Pan Alley Survivor -- No. 38 West 28th Street " Daytonian in Manhattan
  7. ^ Today's Mini-Concert - 4/14/2021