May 3, 2012
The NoMad District’s Tin Pan Alley Once Had America Singing
The NoMad District neighborhood has always been home to the creative types of New York City. As we explore the New York history of the 19th and 20th Centuries, most of the country’s important music publishers had offices on 28th street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues — this street that would later become known as “Tin Pan Alley.”
The two blocks that make up Tin Pan Alley were the origin of innumerable American pop songs and home to some of the country’s greatest pop composers. While the street has undergone significant changes over the years, many of the original buildings remain and a plaque on the sidewalk of 28th Street between Broadway and Sixth Avenue, here in the NoMad District, commemorates the glory days of pop composition.
On this street, composers would go from publisher to publisher hawking their songs by demonstrating them on the piano, and publishers in turn hired pluggers to play new songs in order to sell it to show producers or singers looking for a song to build a career on. It was the resulting cacophony of noise from all the pianos being played along the street that gave the strip the name of Tin Pan Alley.
An integral part of New York history folklore, “Tin Pan Alley” is attributed to a newspaper writer named Monroe Rosenfeld who is said to have coined the term to capture the image of the many pianos being pounded in publisher’s demo rooms. He said it sounded as though hundreds of people were pounding on tin pans.
The first music publisher to set up an office on the street was likely Leo Feist, a corset salesman, who also wrote catchy lyrics. In 1897, Feist rented a room at 1227 Broadway and with a piano and a partner published his first song, “Does True Love Ever Run Smooth.” William Fisher in One Hundred and Fifty Years of Music Publishing In The United States (Oliver Ditson, 1933) noted, “that one room office grew into two buildings.” (others put the advent of Tin Pan Alley as far back as 1885). And the growth didn’t stop there. Here are just some of the most famous composers published on Tin Pan Alley, a virtual who’s who of America’s most famous songwriters.
Some of The Top Tin Pan Alley Composers
Irving Berlin
Hoagy Carmichael
George M. Cohan
George Gershwin
Ira Gershwin
Scott Joplin
Jerome Kern
Johnny Mercer
Cole Porter
Albert Von Tilzer
Harry Von Tilzer
Fats Waller
Tin Pan Alley Hits
It is hard to imagine that these best-loved songs of America all came from two short block in NoMad (and this is just a sampling):
“After the Ball” (Charles K. Harris, 1892)
“The Sidewalks of New York” (Lawlor & Blake, 1894)
“The Band Played On” (Charles B. Ward & John F. Palmer, 1895)
“There’ll Be A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” (Hayden & Mertz, 1896)
“Hello! Ma Baby (Ma Ragtime Gal)” (Emerson, Howard, & Sterling, 1899)
“A Bird in a Gilded Cage” (Harry Von Tilzer, 1900)
“Bill Bailey, Won’t You Please Come Home” (Huey Cannon, 1902)
“In the Good Old Summertime” (Ren Shields & George Evans, 1902)
“Give My Regards To Broadway” (George M. Cohan, 1904)
“In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree” (Williams & van Alstyne, 1905)
“Shine on Harvest Moon” (Nora Bayes & Jack Norworth, 1908)
“Take Me Out to the Ball Game” (Albert Von Tilzer, 1908)
“By The Light of the Silvery Moon” (Gus Edwards & Edward Madden, 1909)
“Down by the Old Mill Stream” (Tell Taylor, 1910)
“Come, Josephine, in My Flying Machine” (Fred Fisher & Alfred Bryan, 1910)
“Let Me Call You Sweetheart” (Beth Slater Whitson & Leo Friedman, 1910)
“Alexander’s Ragtime Band” (Irving Berlin, 1911)
“Peg o’ My Heart” (Fred Fisher & Alfred Bryan, 1913)
“The Darktown Strutters Ball” (Shelton Brooks, 1917)
“God Bless America” (Irving Berlin, 1918; revised 1938)
Carolina in the Morning (Gus Kahn & Walter Donaldson, 1922)
“Way Down Yonder In New Orleans” (Creamer & Turner Layton, 1922)
“Yes, We Have No Bananas” (Frank Silver & Irving Cohn, 1923)
“I Cried for You” (Arthur Freed & Nacio Herb Brown, 1923)
“Sweet Georgia Brown” (Maceo Pinkard, 1925)
“Ain’t She Sweet” (Jack Yellen & Milton Ager, 1927)
“My Blue Heaven” (Walter Donaldson & George Whiting, 1927)
“Happy Days Are Here Again” (Jack Yellen & Milton Ager, 1930)
