Theme and Variations – Looking Southwest from Broadway at 28th Street, New York, New York

The block of 28th Street west of Broadway to 6th Avenue was known as "Tin Pan Alley." Tin Pan Alley is the name given to the collection of New York City music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century. The name originally referred to a specific place: West 28th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, and a plaque (see below) on the sidewalk on 28th Street between Broadway and Sixth commemorates it.

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 and radio 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 American popular music were upstaged by the rise of rock & roll.

Various explanations have been advanced to account for the origins of the term "Tin Pan Alley". The most popular account holds that it was originally a derogatory reference in the New York Herald referring to the sound made by many pianos all playing different tunes being exactly like the banging of many tin pans in an alleyway. According to Katherine Charlton, the "term Tin Pan Alley referred to the thin, tinny tone quality of cheap upright pianos used in music publisher’s offices."

The orange-coloured, 39-storey high-rise residential building in the background is "The Capitol at Chelsea." It was built in 2001 at 26th Street and 6th Avenue on the site of The Racquet Club, the first sports club in NYC. The Raquet Club was built 1876.(It was later known as the University Athletic Club, and finally the Coogan Building). The most interesting structure on this stretch of 6th Avenue, it was slated to be preserved as an historic landmark – but money spoke louder than architecture.