More Tin Pan Alley Woes

When will it no longer be necessary to write posts about how Tin Pan Alley is endangered, I wonder?

I first wrote about the uncertain future of the stretch of old buildings on W. 28th Street—the historical home of the American Songbook—in 2008, when it looked like the former homes of myriad music publishing houses would be levels in favor of apartment towers. The media coverage that ensued and the economic crash of late 2008 helped save the buildings then. But the (still!) un-landmarked structures they're never been quite out of danger. Every year, it seems, a new threat arises. 

In April, I reported that the strip of low-slung edifices—47 through 55 W. 28th Street—were again on the block. Read the Massey Knakal notice: "This Chelsea/Madison Square Park nighborhood has experienced a unique renaissance of hotel conversions, recent residential developments, office building restorations, trendy eatery's [sic] and excellent shopping. All retail units could be delivered vacant."

A reader now informs me that 45-53 W. 28th Street have been sold as a parcel, apparently to Yair Levy, developer of less than sterling character. This is arguably the worst possible news. You can read about the travails of Mr. Levy here. Though Levy is no longer allowed to sell real estate in NYC, he apparently is still permitted to buy real estate. (If you can figure out the logic of that one, please contact me.) It's doubtful Levy cares about the street's former life as the musical soul of America. 

According to this reader, Levy has already approached one of the tenants offering to help them find a nice apartment in an elevator building and has told others he wants to build condos. It seems the as-of-right FAR for the buildings reaches up 10 stories.

This was never a matter that our departing Mayor cared about. (The preservation of any building was a non-issue for him.) Maybe incoming Mayor de Blasio will show more concern about our City's cultural heritage. 

Trouble in Tin Pan Alley

Remember that June 10 art show I posted about, to take place inside the buildings on W. 28th Street that used to constitute Tin Pan Alley? Well, the organizers, Glen Hansen and Cara Negrycz, have been in a prolonged legal battle with the landlord of this group of building. Got this email from Cara:  

The lawyers representing the landlord Jo-Fra Properties which own building 55-49 west 28th street are trying to block the Tin Pan Alley Art Show. The lawyers went into court today 6/4/2010 to file an order blocking us from showing our artwork in our homes.

The art show, FYI, is by invitation only.

The ugliest people always seem to own the most beautiful buildings. Jo-Fra were the same wonders who tried to sell the lot a couple years back, with the idea of demolishing the historic street and putting up a highrise. They were also found by a judge, in 2009, to have been illegally overcharging their tenants. Of course, nobody knows who Jo-Fra is, or where they do business. One never does with these shady landlords.

Skyline Books Resurrected in Tin Pan Alley!

Last winter, my favorite used book store, Skyline Books, closed its Flatiron District space after 20 years. I figured that was the last I would see of their peerless collection of old volumes.

Then a tipster alerted me to the odd presence of a first-edition bookseller taking up space inside a wholesale florist on W. 28th Street between Broadway and Sixth Avenue—a block better known as the old Tin Pan Alley. I investigated.

Read more »

Tin Pan Alley Loses the Encumbrance

I don't now if it's a good sign or a bad sign, but the strip of old buildings on W. 28th Street known a century ago at Tin Pan Alley has lost the unsightly scaffolding that has defiled its appearance since last summer. More than that—and I can't be sure of this—it looks like the block of addresses had been tarted up a bit. It's still painted a rather sickly shade of pale green, but it looks like a smoother, fresher coat.

Tin Pan Alley Buildings Off the Block, Maybe

The New York Observer has a piece on the endangered row of former Tin Pan Alley buildings on W. 28th Street, saying the block of properties is now off the market:

As public opinion moves further against the plan and the economy plunges deeper into recession, a deal is looking increasingly unlikely. The five, mixed-use contiguous properties would yield over 111,000-square feet of “prime Chelsea Property” after demolition, according to the listing that first appeared on the real estate Web site LoopNet in the early fall, along with renderings of a 16-story residential building with 24 retail spaces proposed for the site. Though it remains up, the site says the “property is no longer available.”

This seems to echo an earlier report by the AP. It would be nice to know for sure. Unfortunately, the Coldwell Banker agent marketing the buildings did not respond to a request from the Observer for comment, and Jo-Fra Properties could not be reached. Seems like they can never be reached.

Tin Pan Alley Situation Improving?

The Tin Pan Alley-for-sale story continues to generate news, more than a month after first being reported here. The latest article, published Nov. 8, is by the AP. The report seems to indicate that progress is afoot. Most interested is the intimation that the proposed sale of the five buildings in question, for $4 million, has fallen through "amid the turmoil of the economy" (even though the listing on LoopNet remains) and that the notoriously slow-moving Landmarks Commission "is researching the history of the buildings and reviewing whether they'd be eligible for landmark designation."

Unfortunately—and this has been the case with many recent articles on the subject—the story is riddled with errors. It states that 51 W. 28th Street was the home of music publisher Jerome H. Remick; it was 45 W. 28th Street. The height of the buildings is also misstated; they are five stories tall. Still, keeping the issue in the news is a good thing.

Not for Sale! New Yorkers Try to Save Historic Tin Pan Alley

A group of New Yorkers is fighting to save Tin Pan Alley by turning the half-dozen Manhattan row houses where the iconic American song was born into landmarks.

The four-story, 19th-century buildings on West 28th Street were home to publishers of some of the catchiest American tunes and lyrics -- from "God Bless America" and "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" to "Give My Regards to Broadway." The music of Irving Berlin, Scott Joplin, Fats Waller, George M. Cohan and other greats was born on Tin Pan Alley.

The houses were put up for sale earlier this fall for a whopping $44 million, with plans for a possible high-rise on the block. The plans fell through amid the turmoil in the economy, but the possibility of losing the historic block hastened efforts to push for landmark status for Tin Pan Alley.

"The fear of these buildings being sold for development crystallized their importance, and the need to preserve them," said Simeon Bankoff, executive director of the Historic Districts Council, a nonprofit preservation organization aiming to secure city landmark status for the buildings.

The Landmarks Commission is "researching the history of the buildings and reviewing whether they'd be eligible for landmark designation," said Lisi de Bourbon, a spokeswoman for New York's Landmarks Preservation Commission.

No date has been set for a decision, which she said depends on "a combination of historical, cultural and architectural significance."

A landmark designation would protect the row houses from being destroyed.

The block is sacred to Tim Schreier, a great-great-grandson of Jerome H. Remick, whose music publishing company occupied one of the houses and employed a young sheet music peddler named George Gershwin.

"I'm not opposed to development in New York, but we have to balance development with history -- and this is definitely American cultural history," said Schreier.

From the late 1880s to the mid-1950s, the careers of songwriters who are still popular today were launched from 45, 47, 49, 51, 53 and 55 West 28th -- walls filled with the stories behind the songs.

While composing his music on this block, Berlin also was "a song plugger," said Bankoff. "He'd give you a couple of bars of a song, and ask, 'What d'you think?"'

Leland Bobbe, a 59-year-old photographer, has been renting his apartment at 51 W. 28th St. -- Remick's old building -- since 1975. He says it's important to salvage the houses in a neighborhood "that has lost its uniqueness. It's just another symbol of what New York was and what it will no longer be."

Nearby, high-rise condominiums have pushed out old brownstones. The four-story Tin Pan Alley buildings house street-level wholesale stores selling clothing, jewelry and fabrics; eight apartment units fill the upper floors. It's a noisy neighborhood, with trucks beeping as they back up amid street hawkers selling bootleg movies and knockoff perfumes.

It was just as noisy a century ago -- in a different way. The windows of various music companies released a cacophony of competing piano sounds that earned this part of West 28th Street the nickname Tin Pan Alley, to describe what one journalist said sounded like pounding on tin pans.

The interiors have been altered, but Bobbe's apartment still has the original wood-plank floor and buckled tin ceiling, and the worn wooden front door is more than a century old. The facades are mostly original, though repainted greenish and not a pretty sight, with crumbling cornices and window frames badly in need of repair.

Bobbe pays about $1,000 a month for his 1,000-square-foot apartment -- a bargain compared to Manhattan's stratospheric rents. Since the buildings were legally considered commercial loft space for many decades, residents have had to pay for most upkeep and the owner couldn't charge market-rate rents.

For now, as landmark status is being considered, the wrecking ball won't touch this real estate that Schreier, the publisher's great-great-grandson, says "is part of my blood."

I think it's time for the people involved start thinking in bigger terms. Saving the endangered buildings is the first priority, but the structures on the south side of W. 28th are just as historic. They include the former homes of important music publishers Leo Fiest (No. 36), Charles B. Ward and Harry von Tilzer (No. 42). Those addresses should be included in any proposed historic district. Really, the entire block should be frozen.

The Historic Districts Council is still taking signatures for its petition, by the way. Please visit and sign up.

UPDATE: Author and Tin Pan Alley expert David Freeland checked in with Bob Petrucci, who represents the tenants in these buildings, and Petrucci said the owners of buildings is still trying to sell them. So what's with that incompetent AP reporter?

George Gershwin: 28th Street Vet or Not?

In the recent barrage of press concerning the fate of the former Tin Pan Alley buildings at 47-55 W. 28th Street, there has been some debate as to whether George Gershwin began his career as a song plugger at Jerome H. Remick & Co when the music publisher was on that street, or later when Remick moved uptown.

David Freeland, a music writer who's writing a book that partly concerns Tin Pan Alley, told the Times' City Room that he "believes Gershwin did not work at the company until after it had moved uptown."

A regular reader wrote into Lost City calling this assertion balderdash, and pointed to the Warner Chappell Music website. Warner absorbed Remick long ago, and publishes a history of the publishing house on the site. Part of it runs thusly:

In 1914 Jerome H. Remick and Company, now in a brownstone walk-up on West 28th Street, began hiring song pluggers to sell their tunes to performers.

However, there was always a musical salesman left on the premises to demonstrate songs in the shop and George Gershwin, becoming that type demonstrator, entered the song plugging field when he joined Remick in 1914. While at Remick, Gershwin composed many songs, hoping they would be published. He left Remick shortly after they finally published one entitled "Rialto Ripples" in 1917, with a lyric by Will Donaldson.

Of course, this is text from a promotional website and could be willfully inaccurate. However, it would be no skin off Warner's nose to say Gershwin worked with Remick uptown, as opposed to on 28th Street; Warner could claim Gershwin as part of its legacy either way. Then again, maybe Freeland has uncovered some new bit of history.

Anyway, it's all somewhat immaterial to the argument at hand, because Remick was at 45 W. 28th Street, which is not one of the threatened buildings.

New York Times Gets Around to Tin Pan Alley Story

More than a week after the Tin Pan Alley sale story broke here, the New York Times has finally addressed the issue, both in City Room blog and in the City Section. Only oblique mention of Lost City breaking the story in the former, none at all in the latter. Oh well. As long as it helps the cause. Here's the City Section piece (written by some guy—sorry, I really don't have time to mention his name):

STAND for a minute on West 28th Street, east of Avenue of the Americas, and listen. The sounds on the street are of hawkers selling bootleg movies and knockoff perfumes, and trucks backing up and beeping steadily — the usual urban noise of South Midtown.

Near the middle of the block on Wednesday afternoon, sitting on a stoop in the shade of new scaffolding, a Korean man who owns a second-floor cellphone store recalled the street’s recent history. A decade ago, he said, it was home to a row of florists. A luxury apartment tower went up on the corner around that time, the delivery trucks started getting more parking tickets, and most of the florists moved away.

The man was sitting in front of No. 49, one of the buildings that once helped the block earn its reputation for a different kind of commerce, and a different kind of clangor. It was there, in 1893, that the music publisher M. Witmark & Sons set up shop, and soon, the ringing, tinkling sound of an army of pianos was echoing from windows all along the strip as other music companies opened. The sound, legend holds, earned the stretch of West 28th Street between Fifth Avenue and Avenue of the Americas the nickname Tin Pan Alley.

That was before the cellphone vendor’s time. “Never heard of it,” he said.

But Tin Pan Alley’s golden age, in which the careers of songwriting titans like George Gershwin and Irving Berlin began, has been back in the news this month, with the revelation that five of its buildings — 49 West 28th and four adjacent — are up for sale, presumably to a developer who will tear them down and build a tower.

Last week, as tenants and preservationists geared up for a fight, it was still possible to stand back, look up at the crumbling facades and picture their heyday, a time, historians remind us, when the march of commerce was as insistent as it is today.

“It was a wild place, because all of the publishers’ representatives used to hang out on the sidewalks to try to rope in the performers to hear the latest songs,” said David Freeland, the author of a forthcoming book titled “Automats, Taxi Dances and Vaudeville,” about New York’s lost cultural places.

The environment of the gambling houses and brothels in a larger district that was known as the Tenderloin was aggressive, Mr. Freeland said, a place for go-getters. With all the publishers side by side, he added, “they probably had a relationship that bordered on the malevolent, because it was such a competitive business, and everyone was trying to get an edge. It was pretty intense.”

What emerged, in the height of industrialization at the beginning of the 20th century, was an environment in which songwriting was industrialized, too: Songs were written for categories — sentimental ballads, patriotic songs, comedic ones — and marketed, then shipped on sheet music to department stores. That, Mr. Freeland said, was a product of hardscrabble 28th Street — not that the listeners could tell.

The songs the street produced, and those later produced by writers who got their start there, live on today, on the radio, at weddings and — like “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” — in the seventh-inning stretch.

“The melodies are beautiful and the lyrics are literate and passionate and the rhymes are pure,” Jonathan Schwartz, the radio host and music historian, said of the songs that the street’s brightest lights would go on to produce. “It’s just spellbinding, it’s absolutely beautiful, and nothing like it has followed.”

The roots are there, improbably, on 28th Street. “Look at the second-story windows,” Mr. Freeland said. “You can see where songwriters toiled, knocking out these songs and hoping for a hit.”

UPDATE: OK, I've calmed down. Jake Mooney wrote the above article. What can I say? All writers, even bloggers, crave credit. Plus, I had a really bad day. But Tin Pan Alley's the thing here. The fight to save it goes on.

The Sad Tale of Theodore Dreiser's Big Brother

51 W. 28th Street—among the former Tin Pan Alley building threatened with demolition—was for two short years, 1905-06, the home of Paul Dresser Publishing Co. Those years were also the last of Dresser's life.

Paul Dresser was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, and it is for his song "On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away," a million-seller that made him tons of money, that he remains best known. (It's the Hoosier state song.) He was hugely famous in the 1890s, writing more than 100 songs, including “Wide Wings,” “The Letter That Never Came,” “My Gal Sal,” “Just Tell Them That you Saw Me,” and “The Pardon Came too Late." He had quite the knack for the melodramatic title. He also wrote patriotic tunes with names like "We Are Coming, Cuba, Coming," "Your God Comes First, Your Country Next, Then Mother Dear," "Come Home, Dewey, We Won't Do a Thing to You," "The Blue and the Gray," "Give Us Just Another Lincoln," and "Wrap Me in the Stars and Stripes." McCain and Palin's crowd would have loved Dresser.

Dresser did a lot of things beside write songs. He was a playwright, producer, and, or course, a music publisher. (He was smart, and knew the money lied in publishing, not songwriting.) But he died without a penny, apparently having been too generous with his money. He was 49.

Paul's brother, Theodore—who spelled his name Dreiser (It was Paul who changed his name)—would eventually eclipse his sibling's fame, writing classic novels such as "Sister Carrie" and "An American Tragedy." He depicted his brother's life in "Twelve Men."

Dresser's life was depicted in the 1942 Hollywood biopic "My Gal Sal." Victor Mature—who looked absolutely nothing like the balding, stout, slightly cross-eyed Dresser—played the songwriter. Weirdly, the movie was based on Dreiser's tale from "Twelve Men." Even more strangely, there was no character in the film based on Theodore.

Tin Pan Alley Crisis Now Has Its Own Website

The Historic Districts Council has launched a website to draw attention to the plight of the imperiled row houses at 47, 49, 51, 53 and 55 West 28th Street, formerly home to much of what was Tin Pan Alley. You can find the site here. There's a petition you can sign in support of the preservation of the buildings.

Writes Simeon Bankoff, Executive Director of HDC:

We have also been in touch with a tenant who informed us that the tenants recently won a court case which granted the current residents legal status (the buildings are zoned for commercial or manufacturing use). The current scaffolding has been erected so that the owners can do necessary repairs to the buildings (they are now required to bring the buildings up to code after decades of minimal maintenance). The immediate danger is that without appropriate oversight, the repairs could potentially damage or disfigure the historic facades of the buildings.

Additionally, HDC has been touch with the Landmarks Commission and alerted them to our concerns about the row. We understand that the agency has a file on them, and over the years, some requests for landmarking have been received. At the very least, in 2001, HDC recommended incorporating this row in the Madison Square North Historic District when it was being considered for designation. The next step is to raise public awareness of this significant row and get the agency to act.

Good work, HDC

A Spot Inspection of Tin Pan Alley

I went to the up-for-sale strip of former Tin Pan Alley buildings on W. 28th Street late last week to see if any architectural details remain denoting the structures' former functions as hives of musical invention.

Alas, nothing on the facades would give you any hints that the edifices once housed famous music publishing houses which introduced the world to the wonders of Berlin, Warren and Gershwin. The buildings are suitably old and many of the windows have old-style, wooden-framed panes. But there are no initials in any of the cornices that might belong to a formerly famous publisher, no faded, painted advertisements on a side wall.


The oldest-looking part of the buildings are perhaps the enterways at the top of the flights of stairs leading from the sidewalk. None of the addresses up for sale, aside from No. 47, appear to have modernized doorways. Just the old, huge, wooden kind. The paneling, transoms and details seem to be original. One can easily imagine a hungry songwriter passing through these portals a century ago, on his way upstairs to try and sell a new ditty to the big boss.

The Amazing Witmark Brothers

People look at 47-55 W. 28th Street—the group of addresses that made up part of Tin Pan Alley and are now in danger of being destroyed—and see a clutch of grimy tumble-down buildings. Since there are no historical plaques outside each structure, or nearby museum to educate the curious, it's hard to understand the wealth of cultural history that took place beyond each door.

So, let's amend that a bit. 49-51 was once the home of M. Witmark & Sons, a hugely powerful music publisher 100 years ago. M. Witmark has nothing to do with the company. It was all about the "Sons": Jay, Julius and Isidore. They used their father's name, Marcus, in the name of the company because the three ambitious sons were all minors (the youngest 11, by some accounts!) when they founded the business in 1883—with a toy printing press won by Jay in an arithmetic contest! Marcus was a character himself. Though a New Yorker, he was a captain in the Confederate Army.

Jay was the businessman. Julius gained fame as a singer. Isidore was a songwriter. (Isidore and Julius were both on Broadway in 1902.) The Witmarks published 30 operettas by Victor Herbert—the Broadway heavyweight of his day. Also, scores by Sigmund Romberg, another operetta king, and the George M. Cohan. They published songs everyone still knows, though few now remember their composers: "My Wild Irish Rose" (Chauncey Olcott); "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" (Ernest R. Ball); and "Sweet Adeline" (Harry Armstrong). Irishman across New York City should thank God for the Witmarks every St. Patrick's Day.

By 1900, the firm had branches in Chicago, San Francisco, London, Paris, and Melbourne. Warner Brothers bought Witmark (along with a bunch of other publishing houses) in 1929. Jay went along for the ride, but retired in 1931. But Jay probably made his most lasting mark in music history by co-founding the ASCAP.

Isidore died in 1941, Jay in 1950 and Julius in 1929.

More Tin Pan Alley Reportage

The potential loss of what was Tin Pan Alley has struck a chord in the press. Here's another article on WCBS-TV.

Original Tin Pan Alley Put Up For Sale In N.Y.C.

NEW YORK (CBS) ― Tin Pan Alley, once the home of Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin and dozens of other great American songwriters, is up for sale.

Five buildings in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood are being offered as a group for $44 million. A listing on a real estate Web site, Loopnet, recommends that the buildings at 47, 49, 51, 53 and 55 W. 28th Street be torn down and that a high-rise be built in their place.

Preservationists and tenants are not happy.

"These buildings are incredibly significant to the development of New York City. They helped launch the careers of songwriters and musicians who are still popular today," said Simeon Bankoff, executive director of the Historic Districts Council.

Although there is no indication of it today, Tin Pan Alley housed a concentration of music publishers and songwriters from the 1890s to the 1950s. It is the place where Berlin wrote "God Bless America" and where George M. Cohan wrote "Give My Regards to Broadway." "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" was another tune written there, helping establish the area as a significant contributor to the great American songbook.

Among the other more recognizable songwriters and lyricists who spent time in Tin Pan Alley were Hoagy Carmichael, Scott Joplin, Cole Porter and Fats Waller.

The real estate listing has been active since September, but appears [EDITOR NOTE: "Appears," my ass; it was] to have been first reported this week on a blog, Lost City, which describes itself as "a running Jeremiad on the vestiges of Old New York as they are steamrolled under or threatened by the currently ruthless real estate market and the City Fathers' disregard for Gotham's historical and cultural fabric." The blog reports that in addition to songwriters, 55 W. 28th Street was also the home of "Mother Earth," the magazine started in 1906 by anarchist Emma Goldman.

Here is a partial list of standards that were written in Tin Pan Alley:

* "The Band Played On," 1895
* "A Hot Time In The Old Town Tonight," 1896
* "Hello! Ma Baby (Hello Ma Ragtime Gal)," 1899
* "Bill Bailey, Won't You Please Come Home," 1902
* "In The Good Old Summertime," 1902
* "Give My Regards To Broadway," 1904
* "Shine Little Glow Worm," 1907
* "Shine On Harvest Moon," 1908
* "Take Me Out To The Ballgame," 1908
* "By The Light Of The Silvery Moon," 1909
* "Down By The Old Mill Stream," 1910
* "Let Me Call You Sweetheart," 1910
* "Alexander's Ragtime Band," 1911
* "God Bless America," 1918
* "Swanee," 1919
* "Way Down Yonder In New Orleans," 1922
* "Sweet Georgia Brown," 1925
* "Ain't She Sweet," 1927
* "Happy Days Are Here Again," 1930


The name Tin Pan Alley appears to have been originated by a newspaper writer who visited the area circa 1900, according to music historian Rick Reublin on the Web site parlorsongs.com.

"Monroe Rosenfeld ... coined the term to symbolize the cacophony of the many pianos being pounded in publishers' demo rooms which he characterized as sounding as though hundreds of people were pounding on tin pans," Reublin wrote. "According to the story, he used the term in a series of articles ... around the turn of the century (20th) and it caught on."

Also there's a story on the lazy-ass AP which doesn't mention Lost City as the source, the bastards. Of course, that's the one that everyone from Yahoo to Salon to the Chicago Tribune picked up.

Tin Pan Alley Story Goes Wide

Well, people do care about the fate of Tin Pan Alley. At least superficially, anyway. My post yesterday, about how five buildings on W. 28th Street that once spawned some of the greatest songwriters and music in American history are now on the brink of being sold and demolished, has been picked up by the New York Post (with a vital assist from Curbed). Here's the article:

There's a blue note for Tin Pan Alley, the birthplace of American song.

Much to the dismay of tenants and preservationists, five of the buildings on West 28th Street between Broadway and Sixth Avenue - a block that for 60 years was the heart of the songwriting industry - have gone up for sale.

The buildings, at 47, 49, 51, 53 and 55 West 28th Street, are being sold as a group for - hold on to your hat in these cacophonous economic times - a mere $44 million.

A listing on Loopnet, a real-estate Web site, recommends that the buildings be demolished, "yielding over 111,000 square feet of prime Chelsea property."

The listing includes an architectural rendering of - what else? - a high-rise.

The buildings were listed last month, but most people only found out about it yesterday, when items appeared on the Lost City and Curbed blogs.

"It's a very, very disturbing prospect," said Simeon Bankoff, executive director of the Historic Districts Council, a housing preservation group. "These buildings are incredibly significant to the development of New York City. They helped launch the careers of songwriters and musicians who are still popular today.

"The notion of Tin Pan Alley entered into our idea of New York and our idea of America. The buildings deserve to be protected."

Leland Bobbe, 59, a photographer who has lived at 51 W. 28th St. since 1975, echoed Bankoff's words.

"This makes me sick," he said. "This whole neighborhood has lost its uniqueness. It's just another symbol of what New York was and what it will no longer be."

From the 1890s to the 1950s, Tin Pan Alley was the place where music publishers and songwriters - including Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer - were concentrated.

The sale is being handled by Lois Thompson, of Coldwell Banker, who said she couldn't provide specifics because she was about to begin observing Yom Kippur.

"Catch me on Friday," she said.

Public records say the buildings are owned by Jo-Fra Properties, of Bayside, Queens.

The buildings are well-kept four-story brownstones that have stores on the first floor and apartments above. Tenants pay about $1,000 a month for 1,000 square feet. Residents at 51, 53 and 55 W. 28th St. said they hired a lawyer and had the zoning of the buildings changed from commercial to residential. Bobbe said this means the tenants can't be evicted and that the buyer will have to negotiate with them to get them to leave. They plan to ask for $1 million per apartment.

Whaddaya say, guys? Is it time to rouse the rabble and put flame under the Landmarks Commission's butt?

Tin Pan Alley Threatened

A reader has alerted Lost City to a threat to five of the assortment of buildings along W. 28th Street which were once collectively known as Tin Pan Alley, the early-20th-century wellspring of much of America's musical heritage.

The five buildings at 47-49-51-53-55 West 28th Street has been put up for sale as a group. The Loopnet listing recommends that they be demolished, "yielding over 111,000 sf of Prime Chelsea property." The listing also provides a proposed architectural rendering of what might be built there instead (seen below). The usual thoughtless, anodyne, everyday pile of bricks. The cost to commit this crime: $44,000,000.

The listing has been up since September. One can only hope that, with the current economy, the seller doesn't have a chance in hell of making that price. Lost City has previously decried the fact that these buildings—once home to music publishers that fostered the talents of songwriters Gershwin, Berlin, Donaldson, Carmichael, Warren, Waller, Kahn, Cohan, Mercer, Youmans and dozens more—have been left to rot, with nothing marking their significance to American culture save a small plaque. They don't enjoy landmark status. No pocket museum or tourism bureau marks their presence. It's a positive shanda!

55 W. 28th Street was also, incidentally, the address of famed American socialist Emma Goldman's magazine Mother Earth. If only Goldman were around today. She's organize a hell of a protest against this sale.

More Images of What Was Tin Pan Alley

I didn't expect folks to be so interested in the sad midtown block that used to be Tin Pan Alley. Just goes to show, you never know. Anyway, here a few more images of the doors that once led to the more powerful and popular (and historically influential) music publishers in the world.

No. 51 is where Paul Dresser Publishing was. No. 49 is where M. Witmark & Songs was located.

Where Have You Gone, George Gershwin?

The above nondescript line of storefronts is all that's left of Tin Pan Alley, the songwriting mecca of the early 20th century which was concentrated on W. 28th Street between Broadway and Sixth Avenue. They tell me there's a plaque on the block somewhere commemorating its history, but I can't find it. Otherwise, there's no indication of the mind-bending amount of cultural history that was made on this small stretch of street.

Given the number of songs rattling around in our collective memory that were hatched here and the great musical careers that were born on this strip of street, it's neglect by the City is one of monumental proportions. "After the Ball," "Sidewalks of New York," "A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight," "Hello My Baby," "Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage," "Bill Bailey, Won't You Come Home," "Down By the Old Mill Stream," "Give Me Regards to Broadway," "K-K-K-Katy," "The Darktown Strutter's Ball," "In the Good Old Summertime," "Peg o' My Heart" and hundreds more—all written here. I don't know about you—and I don't know what it says about me—by I know a good chunk of all those songs by heart.

That the ramshackle assortment of buildings have survived at all is some sort of miracle, I guess. It's easy to look at these structures, with their stairs leading up to windowed, second-story storefronts, and imagine Irving Berlin trotting up a flight to try and sell another ditty. The stairway to the right of the blue awning above was once Shapiro, Bernstein & Company, a leading music publisher, and later on the Jerome Remick Music Co., another biggie. Remick's main claim to fame was that teenage George Gershwin worked there as a song plugger—that is, he played songs for potential buyers.
Gershwin met Irving Caesar here. Together they wrote "Swanee," Gershwin's first hit and the man's career was made.

At 49, below, was M. Witmark & Songs, which was responsible for hundreds of hit songs. Later is was Paul Dresser Publishing Co. Across the street was Leo Fiest ("You can't go wrong with a Fiest song.") Ought to be a small City museum on this block somewhere.