Tin Pan Alley, the stretch of West 28th Street (between Broadway and 5th) where songwriters like Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, and Scott Joplin worked and published over the decades, creating some of the best pieces of the American songbook, is now up for sale. It's being hawked at some $44 million, ending an era that, well, really ended in the 1950's. But whatever, chronological semantics aside, it's a significant group of buildings that are essential pieces of the city's cultural history and now, well, they'll probably be condos. A listing recommends that the buildings be torn down, and that some sort of awful high-rise be erected in their place. Probably all steel and glass. No soul.