Mildred McMillen, born Chicago, IL - House Tops - 1918 - T-Shirt

This woodcut cityscape turns a cluster of Chicago rooftops into a study of shape, density, and everyday life.

Visual Elements & Composition

Black dominates the print, with off-white filling the open sky and the planes between roofs, and a small amount of grey adding tonal variation. Steep gabled roofs and diagonal roof planes repeat across the picture, forming a rhythm of rectangular facades that stacks toward the top edge. Small scenes are tucked into the structure: a woman hangs laundry on a line, a figure climbs a ladder toward a roof, and exterior wooden staircases climb the walls. The words House Tops sit within the design itself.

Meaning & Symbolism

McMillen was born in Chicago and worked within the regionalist currents of early twentieth-century American art, documenting the move from traditional environments to modern urban settings. Her attention falls on the ordinary architecture of row houses and wooden back stairs, the places where people lived and worked. Created in 1918, in the years following the First World War, the print reads the crowded roofline as evidence of a city expanding in both its homes and its industry. The laundry and the climbing figure keep human activity at the center of that density.

Worn Close, Read Up Close

Printed across the front of a tee, the composition is seen at conversation distance rather than across a room. As the body moves, the rooflines shift and fold with it, so the diagonal planes change angle with every step. The laundry line and the ladder sit where the eye lands first, turning the shirt into a small street view that reveals more the closer you look.