This 35-inch tall by 48-inch-wide painting sits inside a wide, wood frame. This cityscape painting is set in New York City. A dark blue and gray sky hangs over mostly red tenement buildings. The buildings span the entire width of the canvas, having a very flat, lifeless appearance. The artist depicts many individual tenement buildings that are all touching by varying the red and sometimes orange colors of the buildings from one to the next. Gray squares fill the rectangular buildings, indicating windows. The windows reflect the color of the blue-gray color that fills the sky. Nothing can be seen in the windows; they have a glassy, empty feeling.

In front of the red, flat tenement buildings are two playground sets depicted by thin, white lines. The taller set stands in front of the shorter set, and they both span most of the area in front of the buildings. Neither one is being used. Unlike a typical playground, the only apparatuses included are multiple sets of black rings hanging from white lines.

Two children are shown in this artwork. In the middle of the left side stands a young, White boy in front of the red tenement buildings. He has light hair and dark lines for eyes, but most of his facial features are obscured. He is wearing a gray shirt and shorts with gray knee socks and shoes. He is opening a newspaper in his hands; his head looks down to read it. The other child appears in the bottom right corner, kneeling on the gray and white ground composed of many visible brushstrokes. A young, White boy looks down at an open newspaper that shows little, colorful boxes, representing comic strips. He rests on his hands that are placed on the left and right side of his paper. He has brown hair with lighter highlights and wears a green jacket, black shorts, black knee-high socks, and black shoes. Even though the two boys are doing the same activity, they do not acknowledge the other.

The artist signed his name “Ben Shahn” in black in the bottom right corner.

Shahn was an immigrant, coming to the U.S. as a child in 1906 from Lithuania. Many of his artworks, like this painting, reflect some of the isolation and adjustment he might have experienced when settling in in New York City.