LeConte Stewart had always been attracted to depict vacant farm houses. Toward the middle of the 1930s he painted dilapidated store fronts and stark houses near railroad tracks in a new, non–impressionistic style reminiscent of the work of Edward Hopper. He explained: "It is not that I love the lyrical in nature any the less, but I feel that in modern life there is not time nor inclination for it. In these pictures I'm trying to cut a slice of contemporary life as it is in the highways and byways, as I have found it....That is life, and there is nothing more interesting than life."