Gerald Sinclair Hayward, born Port - Bayard House, 110th St. Harlem between 1st and 2nd Avenue - 1864 - T-Shirt

This design is a hand-coloured lithograph of Bayard House, a family residence on 110th Street in Harlem, drawn as it stood in 1864.

Visual Elements & Composition

The scene is framed as a horizontal rectangle, with a title block set beneath the image like a caption. A two-storey clapboard house with a porch and chimneys sits at the centre, and a large shade tree spreads over the front lawn. A seated figure and a small dog rest on the grass, and low outbuildings extend to the right while a wooden fence closes the left edge. The palette is built from leaf green, which covers the largest share of the image, with cream and peach tan filling the sky, walls and ground. Brick red and dark brown appear in small accents on the roof, chimneys and fence. The printed text reads BAYARD HOUSE. and 110th Street Harlem, between 1st and 2nd Avenue, at the beginning of the present century. The credit line gives Litho by G. Hayward 111 Pearl St. N.Y. and For D. T. Valentine's Manual 1864.

Meaning & Symbolism

The picture presents a domestic place as a fixed point in a changing city. In 1864 Harlem was shifting from rural outskirts into a more structured urban district, and the orderly house, open lawn and sheltering tree show that transition in one view. The artist, Gerald Sinclair Hayward, was born in Port Hope, Ontario, in 1845 and died in New York City in 1926. He made this print for D. T. Valentine's Manual, a New York City publication, so the image was meant to record local streets and buildings for readers of the period. The seated figure and the dog bring a quiet, everyday scale to a document that is otherwise architectural.

On the Unisex Heavy Cotton Tee

A horizontal scene reads best when it sits across the chest, where the house, tree and lawn can be seen whole, and the title block below gives the wearer the same caption the original print carried. The composition is calm and open, so the leaf green and cream stand out clearly against the shirt, and the small figures and dog reward a closer look at the front of the tee.