The People Work--Evening

The dramatic increase in urban population during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries led to the construction of large, complex, and controversial inner-city transportation systems. Benton Spruance's Philadelphia built a combination of elevated trains and subways designed to ease the commute to and from work, home, and entertainment.

Spruance used the train as a means to depict the rich panoply of Philadelphia's population: men and women; young and old; the working and professional classes. In the first two lithographs, Morning and Evening, the people-even those Spruance portrayed with grotesque, masklike features-move with orderly precision. In Night, however, the station becomes home to the idle and dispossessed. In the interaction of a man lounging on the steps with one of the women in the foreground, Spruance indicated that perhaps less wholesome "work" is being performed.