Tin Pan Alley Residents Want $1 Million Each

The music publishers may have departed the brownstones of Tin Pan Alley in the 1950s, but the block's sad final song might only now be playing out. Yesterday, Lost City pointed to an online listing for five of the four-story buildings on West 28th Street between Broadway and Sixth Avenue, a package deal offered at $44 million complete with a rendering of a high-rise tower that could be built in their place. Today, the Post does some follow-up digging on the former hangout of George Gershwin and Irving Berlin, and while specifics on the properties—at 47-55 West 28th Street—aren't yet available, we're told the tenants who live above the storefronts (they pay about $1,000/month each) can't be evicted, and they claim they'll ask for a buyout of $1 million per apartment to ditch the birthplace of American song. Well, maybe not all of them. Said one, "This makes me sick. This whole neighborhood has lost its uniqueness. It's just another symbol of what New York was and what it will no longer be." So this could be a lengthy scrap, but rest assured that when/if these buildings do find a buyer, our "The Day the Music Died" headline will be ready.
· Tin Pan Alley's Sad Tune [NYP]
· Tin Pan Alley Threatened [Lost City]For more stories from Curbed, go to curbed.com.

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