Tin Pan Alley
Tin Pan Alley proper noun: the district in New York City centered on 28th Street from the late 19th to the early 20th century, wherein thousands of popular songs were commercially written.
Proper noun
Tin Pan Alley
- The district in New York City centered on 28th Street from the late 19th to the early 20th century, wherein thousands of popular songs were commercially written.
- The songwriting and publishing industry which was built around the songs produced in Tin Pan Alley; the style of popular music produced by this industry.
- From its inception the OWI framed directives that offered guidelines for songwriters to aid them in the composition of “proper” war songs, and, in the public press, the OWI rebuked Tin Pan Alley for its uninterrupted production of “nostalgic” hit songs.2003, Kathleen E. R. Smith, God Bless America: Tin Pan Alley Goes to War, University Press of Kentucky, →ISBN, page 81
- At the time, almost all Tin Pan Alley and Broadway songs had two parts.2009, Tighe E. Zimmers, Tin Pan Alley Girl: A Biography of Ann Ronell, McFarland, →ISBN, page 11
Origin of Tin Pan Alley
Purported to be a reference to the constant sound of pianos as songwriters worked out their tunes.
Words formed from Tin Pan Alley
Questions about Tin Pan Alley
- What does Tin Pan Alley mean?
- Tin Pan Alley means the district in New York City centered on 28th Street from the late 19th to the early 20th century, wherein thousands of popular songs were commercially written.
- What part of speech is Tin Pan Alley?
- Tin Pan Alley is a proper noun.
Words near Tin Pan Alley in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: Tin Pan Alley (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “Tin Pan Alley.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tin_pan_alley. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.