Levittown history
A suburban town on Long Island, New York, that was the first purpose-built suburb in the United States. The town was built by Levitt & Sons, a family-run firm founded in 1929 that first conceived the idea in 1947. The firm was headed by William J. Levitt, who got into the real estate and building business when he sold a home for his brother. The success of the small transaction encouraged them, and Levitt & Sons was formed.
The firm first attempted a large-scale housing development in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1945, when it built 1,600 small houses. The marketing for the homes was unsuccessful during the war. The company did not make a profit for its efforts, but it did not abandon the concept. William Levitt realized that the millions of returning servicemen discharged after the war would need housing. Using knowledge acquired from other small developments built during the war, the idea of Levittown was born.
After purchasing a 1,000-acre farm located midway between New York City and the Long Island towns where major defense contractors were located, the company proceeded to build more than 17,000 ranch-style homes on the site. Each unit averaged about 750 square feet and had amenities built in that were not often used in mass housing, such as built-in storage units, appliances, and kitchens located in the front of the house rather than the rear. The homes sold for $7,990 each, considerably less than competitors’ homes. But they still made a profit for the company because of the quantity built.
Levittown marketed its homes to whites only and lured city dwellers from Brooklyn and Queens. The community contributed to the urban flight that characterized the 1950s and 1960s and was a major factor in the rapid suburbanization of Long Island. It also indirectly applied pressure on New York banking laws, which until that time prohibited New York City banks from crossing county lines. Many banks lobbied for changes in the laws so that they could follow the exodus.
In 1967, Levitt & Sons was sold for $92 million to conglomerate ITT, which viewed Levitt’s communities as a potential customer for many of its diverse products. The suburban concept was imitated many times around the country as builders adopted the marketing concept of building many units at smaller profit margins than on larger houses. For future generations, the name Levittown became a metaphor for the advantages and disadvantages of suburban living in America and was also the model for hundreds of similar projects around the country that capitalized on the post–World War II demand for new housing.
See also CONGLOMERATES.
Further reading
- Kelly, Barbara M. Expanding the American Dream: Building and Rebuilding Levittown. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993.
- Sobel, Robert. The Great Boom, 1950–2000: How a Generation of Americans Created the World’s Most Prosperous Society. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001.
