More on Prehistory of "Tin Pan Alley"

[Garson O'Toole]

Fred: Thanks for sharing the cites and your hypothesis. Here is an
instance of the phrase "tin pan alley" in quotes in 1869. The words
were printed in the Local News section of an Alexandria, Virginia
newspaper.

Cite: 1869 March 17, Alexandria Gazette, Local News, Watch Report,
Page 3, Column 3, Alexandria, Virginia. (GenealogyBank)

[Begin excerpt]
WATCH REPORT.-Night clear and cold.-
A slight row occurred in "tin pan alley," and
a colored ball in "Petersburg" was broken up,
but no arrests were made at either. Two
lodgers were furnished with sleeping quarters
at the watch house.
[End excerpt]

There is no date given in the newspaper page header for page three,
but the front page agrees with the date given by the database.

This material was retyped because the OCR results were poor. Please
recheck for typos.
Garson


On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 6:49 AM, Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Shapiro, Fred" <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      More on Prehistory of "Tin Pan Alley"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I have previously posted evidence from New Haven newspapers going back to 1=
> 890 indicating that "Tin Pan Alley" was used as some kind of generic street=
>  name earlier than the usage referring to New York City's songwriting / son=
> g publishing district (OED 1908, Popik 1903).  Now, in searching Chroniclin=
> g America, I see other early evidence from non-New Haven cities:
>
> 1895 _Climax_ (Richmond, Ky.) 26 June (Chronicling America)  Pigg brothers,=
>  Less and Joe, have recently bought a saloon and grocery.  They are on back=
>  street in front of Tin-pan alley.
>
> 1898 _Daily Press_ (Newport News, Va.) 20 Mar. 1 (Chronicling America)  The=
>  authorship was fixed on Lankford.  It got a little too warm for the colore=
> d attorney and proprietor of a saloon in Tin Pan alley, and he left the cit=
> y.
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
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