Playing via Spotify Playing via YouTube
Skip to YouTube video

Loading player…

Scrobble from Spotify?

Connect your Spotify account to your Last.fm account and scrobble everything you listen to, from any Spotify app on any device or platform.

Connect to Spotify

Dismiss

Don't want to see ads? Upgrade Now

Wiki

The Brill Building (built 1931 as the Alan E. Lefcourt Building and designed by Victor Bark Jr.) is an office building located at 1619 Broadway on 49th Street in the Manhattan borough of New York City, just north of Times Square and further uptown from the historic musical Tin Pan Alley neighborhood. It is famous for housing music industry offices and studios where some of the most popular American music tunes were written. The building has been described as "the most important generator of popular songs in the Western world."

The building is 11 stories and has approximately 175,000 square feet (16,300 m2) of rentable area. The "Brill" name comes from a haberdasher that operated a store at street level and subsequently bought the building.

Even before World War II it became a center of activity for the popular music industry, especially music publishing and songwriting. Scores of music publishers had offices in the Brill Building. Once songs had been published, the publishers sent song pluggers to the popular white bands and radio stations. These song pluggers would sing and/or play the song for the band leaders to encourage bands to play their music.

During the ASCAP strike of 1941, many of the composers, authors and publishers turned to pseudonyms in order to have their songs played on the air.

Brill Building songs were constantly at the top of Billboard's Hit Parade and played by the leading bands of the day.

Edit this wiki

Don't want to see ads? Upgrade Now

Don't want to see ads? Upgrade Now

Don't want to see ads? Upgrade Now

API Calls