Campaign to save Tin Pan Alley

Judged by their facades alone, the block of 19th-century houses on West 28th Street just off Broadway in Manhattan would have little to detain the passerby. They are painted a sickly shade of green, and front an array of bucket shops selling hastily printed Obama T-shirts, cheap jewellery and imitation perfumes.

But to initiates in the history of early 20th-century popular music, they are a temple of musical largesse to be revered and protected. It was in this row of four-storey buildings, with its classic New York iron fire escapes and elaborate plasterwork, that the modern popular music industry was created.

The nickname by which the block came to be known - Tin Pan Alley - in time came to represent the entire music industry. But now the block is threatened, having been put up for sale by its owners for $44m (£30m) with the probable result that it will be knocked down for replacement by an office block.

Tenants living in the apartments, as well as music lovers and architectural conservationists, are trying to fend off the sale. They are pressing for permanent landmark status for the buildings.

"That these buildings, where the sheet music business began, still exist is wonderful. We don't need another faceless office tower when we could preserve something as historic as this," said Simeon Bankoff of a New York preservation body, the Historic Districts Council.

The historic links of the block date back to 1893 when the music publisher M Witmark & Sons moved there, attracting other firms to follow. On their coattails came songwriters, performers, agents and managers, and before long the place was buzzing with energy and sound.

David Freeland, whose book on the city's disappearing cultural spots, called Automats, Taxi Dances and Vaudeville, is to be published shortly, said the street was "filled with the cacophony of upright pianos being hammered day and night by songwriters demonstrating their latest creations, looking for the next hit. It was a place of noise, activity and competition."

The cacophony is probably what gave rise to the name, in unflattering allusion to the noise of clashing pans. Between the 1890s and 1930s, some of the great names in American music set up shop in what must rank among the highest density of creative brainpower per square foot in any place or time. George and Ira Gershwin and Irving Berlin had offices, as did Scott Joplin, Cole Porter and Fats Waller.

Out of the cramped premises, some of the best known songs also emerged. They include Take Me Out to the Ball Game, the tune sung with almost religious fervour at baseball games, Happy Days Are Here Again, which Franklin Roosevelt adopted as his 1932 campaign song, and Berlin's unofficial US anthem, God Bless America.

By its peak, this short strip of real estate had become to music what the Model T Ford factory was to car production. "It was here popular music grew up into a mass force, and was marketed just like any other factory product," said Freeland.