John Marin first depicted New York in 1909–1910, and it became one of his favorite themes. His images of the city personify the hurly-burly pace of urban life in twentieth-century America, as in Street Crossing, New York, in which fragmented, overlapping planes represent towering buildings, and sketchy brushstrokes suggest objects and moving figures, all part of the dynamic rhythms of life in the city. The idea that music was related to the rapid tempo of modern life was often discussed among modernist artists, philosophers, critics, musicians, and writers at this time. For Marin and other artists who gathered around Alfred Stieglitz’s Gallery 291, the syncopated beat of jazz music symbolized New York's pulsating energy and became a metaphor for modern American culture in general.
In Street Crossing the towering buildings are defined as a series of large cubist planes. Strong diagonal lines throughout the composition increase the feeling of movement and exhilaration. Around the subway station in the lower left, fine lines and thick slashes of paint allude to speeding cars and rapidly walking pedestrians, creating a seemingly agitated but well organized image of urban activity.