House by the railway

Edward Hopper created his urban landscapes of the 1920s (mainly views of New England), carefully choosing the object. A three-story Victorian house with a characteristic attic stands on a raised platform and is cut off from the viewer and the whole world by sharp horizontal railway tracks. The author intrigues the viewer even more by closing the windows with curtains. There is no possibility of contact between those who live inside and other people. Late evening glow makes the old architecture mysterious; the absence of signs of life in the house and the desolate landscape may indicate that traditions are forgotten in the desire for urbanization and progress. They are symbolized by the railway. It was speculated that the building was created by imagination. However, there is an eyewitness who clearly remembered how Hopper sat across the road many times and painted a particular house in Haverstore in New York. In 1930, it became the first painting acquired in the permanent collection of the newly created Museum of Modern Art. Hopper was pleased to know that Alfred Hitchcock used the picture as inspiration for a house in his film “Psycho” (1960).