John Marin was a daring and accomplished watercolorist, and was a central force in claiming the medium as a tool for Modernist expression. Between the late 1910s and 1928, Marin used watercolor exclusively. After six years in Europe, Marin returned to New York City in 1910 to find that the city had changed. Cars and electronic trolleys were everywhere, bridges spanned the rivers, and skyscrapers were dominating lower Manhattan. Marin focused on the urban landscape around him, including the New York Telephone Building, seen in this watercolor.

Marin painted angular shapes that meet and collide, inspired by the unusual architecture of the building itself. The new skyscraper was designed to accommodate its location—filling the parallelogram-shaped block on which it stands, with each of the towers set at slightly different angles. Marin distorted the shapes of the building in his painting, calling forth the unique qualities of an architectural marvel.