Tin Pan Alley originally referred to the area, centered at Broadway and 14th Street, where enterprising composers, businessmen, and music publishers first began to industriously commercialize American popular music in the 1890s. The name of the area probably came from the tinny pianos that “song pluggers” used on the street corners. (Composers would pay to have their song played for publicity.) Many of the country’s best–loved composers from the first half of the twentieth century including Irving Berlin, Duke Ellington, and George Cohan, were part of the Tin Pan Alley industry.