Watch-Tower, Corner of Spring and Varick Streets, New York

Watch-Tower, Corner of Spring and Varick Streets, New York is a seminal wood engraving on paper created by Winslow Homer (American, 1836-1910) in 1874. This work was published in Harper’s Weekly, the era's leading illustrated newspaper, which played a crucial role in shaping visual culture across the United States during the post-Civil War period. The image, realized through the collaborative process of illustration and printing inherent to wood engraving, documents a specific, verifiable location in Lower Manhattan.

As an illustrator for popular magazines, Homer frequently documented scenes of contemporary American life, shifting his focus from battlefield reports toward the growing complexity of urban and leisure environments. This particular piece depicts a vital yet rapidly disappearing fixture of 19th-century infrastructure: the municipal watch-tower, likely used for spotting fires or overseeing rapidly expanding New York City. Homer’s technique, relying on the strong contrasts and linear detail characteristic of the wood engraving medium, captures the scale of the utilitarian structure set against the backdrop of everyday activity at the intersection of Spring and Varick Streets.

This important example of 19th-century American printmaking highlights Homer's early career before he dedicated himself primarily to oil painting. Works like this were crucial for disseminating images widely to the public. As high-quality prints from this period, many of these images now reside in the public domain, allowing for extensive scholarly study of pictorial journalism and industrial architecture. Classified as a Print, the artwork is currently held in the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, offering tangible insight into the societal concerns and visual culture of the United States in the 1870s.