The stark framing makes the room the main focus, drawing the eye and giving realness to the action of peeping into a space where the subjects are unaware they are being watched.

"[3] Despite the snapshot-esque quality of the scene, it is actually no one particular window or moment Hopper peered into but rather a culmination of many different narratives he saw as he roamed New York City.

Hopper places a door almost exactly center to divide the work into two distinct halves horizontally, isolating the man and the woman into their respective sides.

[8] Art historian Pamela Koob points out that the "solitary figures in Hopper’s paintings may well be evocations of such contented solitude rather than the loneliness so often cited.

[12] Specifically, art historian Linda Nochlin argues that Hopper still held on to "vestiges of its figural conventions, its spatial shorthand, and its coy puritan stiffness of contour."

While these estranged pairs appear in many of Hopper’s works, art historian Joseph Stanton suggests that Hotel by a Railroad might be something of a companion piece to Room in New York.

[14] In both works, the dresses the women wear are the same color and the extremely dark hair and pale skin furthers the likeness between them.