The paradigmatic post-World War II American suburb and product of a $50 million housing development constructed by Abraham, Alfred, and William Levitt.
Levittown was a development of mass-produced housing built beginning in 1947 in the Hempstead Plains of Long Island about 50 miles east of Manhattan. At first only returning World War II veterans and their families could purchase homes in the development. The town’s progenitors, developer William Levitt and his architect brother, Alfred, capitalized on the housing crunch of the immediate post-World War II years and on their own mass-production know-how, learned from their father Abraham, to make home ownership a reality for the growing ranks of middle-class families. The planned community consisted of assembled homes, mostly Cape Cod and ranch-style single-family detached houses, along curvilinear drives off the parkways leading from New York City. Each unit included a 12-by-16-foot living room with a fireplace, one bath, and two bedrooms, with room for expansion upstairs or outward into the yard. Detractors ridiculed the raw, unfinished quality of Levittown’s landscape and the homogeneity of its dwellings. But young, middle-income families responded enthusiastically to the prospect of home ownership made possible by the Levitts’ novel approach to home building and new, more active government housing policies, such as mortgage guarantees by the Federal Housing Administration. The first 1,800 houses in Levittown were available only as rentals with an option to buy after a year’s residence. Because the mortgage and taxes combined were less than the rent, almost all of the original Levittown-ers opted for purchase. After 1949, the developers sold all additional units. Levittown ultimately encompassed more than 17,400 separate houses and 82,000 residents. Levittown’s restrictive racial covenant barring African Americans from purchasing homes stayed intact until the 1960s.
