Ancoats was hardly a propitious site or subject, yet Lowry was asked not only to draw this dystopia, but also to do so with a local exhibition as his goal. As this essay shows, the works he made in response to that invitation are singularly laconic experiments in urban description. More than this, they redefine “description” in strikingly contextual terms. Already an accomplished draftsman, on this occasion Lowry produced a suite of drawings that paid scrupulous attention to setting down the main characteristics of a singularly ordinary urban place: place, meaning a recognizable location marked by distinct and identifiable features—a definition to which we return. Thanks to the efficiently predictable effects of perspective, the lineaments of his chosen locations are meant to be convincing, without being “interesting” in any familiar pictorial way.