HOUSE BY THE RAILROAD
EDWARD HOPPER, 1925
You know this house. Look at it a second. Tall, gray, pointy roof, windows staring down at you. You've seen it before, at the movies. It's the Psycho house. And no, that's not a stretch. Hitchcock said it. The Bates mansion came from looking at this painting. Hopper found out and loved it. The screenwriter topped it. Said Norman Bates, if the guy were a painting, he'd be a Hopper. Okay, but now the weird part. Look for the scary thing. There isn't one. Broad daylight. Blue sky. No ghost, no shadow, nothing wrong you can point at. Just this big proud Victorian standing up straight, and train tracks slicing right across the front of it. Like somebody crossed it out. And that's the whole story right there. Quietly brutal. This used to be the house. The fancy one. The one people slowed down to look at. Then the railroad came through, and the world went with it. Nobody tore the house down. Nobody had to. It just got left. Still standing, still symmetrical, like it remembers being admired. And maybe Hopper knew the feeling. Guy could barely sell a painting till he was past forty. And get this. When MoMA started collecting, the first painting in the door, painting number one, was this one. A whole museum dedicated to the 'new', and entry number one is the thing the 'new' left behind. And the actual house? Still up there. Haverstraw, New York, right by the tracks. You could go see it this afternoon. It'll be there. It was never going anywhere.