For a time, a crucifix hung on the wall of the Grace House lobby . Then, in the early 1980s, something else took its place : the stark black outline of a crawling infant, in thick strokes of paint beaming outward.

In the decades at Grace House, a Catholic youth center on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the image was a tag: Keith Haring was here.

The radiant baby, one of Haring’s most recognizable symbols, was the beginning of a three-story mural by the artist, who in one evening painted a dozen more figures dancing up the stairs.

The characters he brought to life were quintessential Haring — the barking dog, a person with a corkscrew torso, conjoined figures with a hole in their shared chest.