Georgia O'Keeffe began painting her New York skyscraper series in 1925.
The series grew from her experience living in Manhattan with Alfred Stieglitz. O'Keeffe painted buildings and city views from high vantage points, including scenes associated with the Shelton Hotel, where she and Stieglitz lived. Her skyscraper paintings treated modern architecture as a subject for rhythm, geometry, light, and abstraction.
These works were significant because urban architecture was still a relatively unusual focus for a major American woman painter of the period. O'Keeffe is more often associated with flowers and New Mexico landscapes, so the skyscraper series can be overlooked. The paintings were not made after her permanent move to New Mexico; they belong to her earlier New York period.