Formal Elements:

As to its formal elements, one of the most compelling and distinguishing aspects of the Leger work is its volume. Even as a hodge-podge of geometrical shapes spans the canvas without any illusion of dimensionality, the manner in which the painter has layered these shapes does given the impression of a clustered downtown area. Its depth is self-apparent by the sharp and definite lines separating objects as well as the manner in which certain objects appear almost to lurk or peek out from the background. The oil on canvas work, originally displayed at 91 x 117 1/2 inches and currently viewable in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, proposes enormity in its landscape, its depth and its height.

Content:

As to the height especially, we are moved to think of pillars and...

Leger toys with the iconography of evolving urban life. Scaffolding, commercial type-set, bits of road, telephone wires and bolts of electricity are all implied in the strangely organized jumble of objects.
Meaning:

Perhaps most critically among these objects are several marginally human-shaped figures. The cubist renderings of the human figures, one embossed on what appears to be a picture-in-picture print, and one hanging (again, it would appear), on a clothesline in the background. The integration of these figures into the city-scape underscores the meaning of alienation and dehumanization prompted by the mechanized impulses of modernization that seems to drive the painting as a whole.

Works Cited:

Horsley, C.B. (1998). Fernand Leger. The Museum of Modern Art.