Just One Line Art Embrace simplicity

One city. One line.

New York Skyline Art

Manhattan, the harbor and the bridge in a single stroke.

New York Skyline Mug
New York Skyline Mug
from $16.99
New York Skyline Canvas Print
New York Skyline Canvas Print
from $49.99

$7.99 shipping across the US, arriving in 5 to 15 business days. Anything that turns up damaged or wrong is replaced free within 30 days. Shipping and returns in full.

New York is the easiest skyline to draw and the hardest to draw well, because everybody already has one in their head. This drawing works by choosing five things and refusing the rest.

What is in the drawing

The line starts in a huddle of stepped midtown towers, climbs a spire and its mast, and then drops flat to run across a suspension bridge, two towers and the long sag of cable between them. The Statue of Liberty stands at the middle on her plinth, drawn at the same height as the buildings on either side of her, which is nothing like the harbor and exactly like the way the city is remembered. Past her the line climbs again through a tapered tower and a stepped crown topped by a needle, then flattens into two plain slabs and runs out.

Who buys it

This is the one people buy for somebody who has left. Four years in a walk-up, a job that ended, a city that stopped being affordable: the drawing holds the outline without any of the detail, which is how it gets remembered anyway.

Mug or canvas

Liberty and the two spires push this one upward rather than outward, so it is among the most compact drawings in the set, closer to square than to a band. That suits a mug, where a long horizontal run has nowhere to go once the wrap curves away. On a canvas it keeps an even margin on all four sides instead of sitting as a stripe.

Other cities

The whole catalog runs to 258 cities. See every design.