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It has been more than a half-century since a new generation of World War II veterans arrived at home. As a result, builders have developed new facilities that specifically accommodate the return heroes. Two examples of this type of development are the Pennsylvanian and the Colonial, two styles of detached homes that first appeared in Willingboro, New Jersey, several years ago.
This is the condensed version of the history of the Levitt companies. The details of the transfer of the companies--and there are many--can be seen in the Timeline on the Levitt and Sons page. In the postwar years, Levittown provided many families with affordable housing.
Other Levittown projects
In addition, the company's modular units were available to other builders and developers. The communities list at left shows many projects built under different company names. They all began with Levitt and Sons, Inc., the company that Abraham Levitt established in 1929, and sons William and Alfred made a success with innovative home designs construction methods. William assumed full control of the company in 1954 and later sold the company to ITT in 1968. William continued to run the company while under ITT ownership until 1972. In the meanwhile, William Levitt established his own companies to continue homebuilding projects in the United States and abroad.
After returning from the war, he saw a need for affordable housing for returning veterans. America's post-war prosperity and baby boom had created a crisis of affordable housing. The Levitt family began and perfected their home construction techniques during World War II with contracts to build housing for the military on the East Coast. Following the war, they began to build subdivisions for returning veterans and their families. Their first major subdivision was in the community of Roslyn on Long Island which consisted of 2,250 homes.
The Long Island, NY locale was the country's largest housing development
During the 1960s, Levitt and Sons did well in responding to market demands and priced its new homes accordingly. The homes became larger and more expensive, though still priced under those of the competitors when considering the standard features included in the sale price. With demand gradually driving market prices of new homes up, Levitt inadvertently targeted the middle- and upper-class buyer. Shifting its townhouse operation from site-built to prefabricated modular construction was another way of keeping the costs of such units lower, and to maintain a foothold in this market.
Within Levittown's curvilinear streets was a single city-wide high school, a library, city hall, and grocery shopping center. At the time of Levittown's development, people still had to travel to the central city for department store and major shopping, the people moved to the suburbs but the stores hadn't yet. In 1951, the Levitts built their second Levittown in Bucks County, Pennsylvania and then in 1955 the Levitts purchased land in Burlington County .
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Abraham directed the landscaping, whose focus was two trees to each front yard, all planted exactly the same distance apart. William was the financier and promoter, who persuaded lawmakers to rewrite the laws that made Levittown possible. The houses, which were in the Cape Cod and ranch house styles, sat on a seventh-acre (0.06 ha) lot. They had 750 square feet with two bedrooms, a living room with a television and a kitchen with modern appliances, an unfinished second floor and no garage. Levittown became a symbol of post-war suburbia with its mass-produced homes, emphasis on conformity, and a return to traditional gender roles.
The building of every house was reduced to 27 steps, and sub-contractors were responsible for each step. His mass production of thousands of houses at virtually the same time allowed Levitt to sell them, fully furnished with modern appliances, for as little as $8,000 each ($65,000 in 2009 dollars), which, with the G.I. Bill and Federal housing subsidies, reduced the up-front cost of a house to many buyers to around $400. William Levitt came to symbolize the new suburban growth with his use of mass-production techniques to construct large developments of houses, eponymously named Levittowns, selling for under $10,000. Many other relatively inexpensive suburban developments soon appeared throughout the country. The local newspapers were certainly interested in the scheme, wondering how the new Bowie houses would resemble but differ from their predecessors in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
After World War II, an affordable housing crisis was created in America, particularly for veterans, as a result of the country’s post-war prosperity and baby boom. Levitt & Sons chose a piece of property known as Island Trees near Hempstead, Long Island, as the site for a major project to house these veterans. During the project, Levitt & Sons emphasized speed, efficiency, and cost-effective construction; these methods led to a production rate of 30 houses a day by July 1948. The mass production of thousands of houses at virtually the same time allowed the company to sell them for as little as $8,000 each ($65,000 in 2009 dollars), which, with the G.I. At the time, the community seemed utopian, as people who were willing to sacrifice their lives for their country could live peacefully without financial burden.
Click here to claim this profile, add information, and upload projects. Private investment company Oak Point Partners acquired the remnant assets, consisting of any known and unknown assets that weren't previously administered, from the Levitt and Sons, LLC, et al., Bankruptcy Estates on October 30, 2013.
Even areas like Stuyvesant Town, Parkchester, and Addisleigh Park only accepted whites at first. In Levittown, Black veterans were unable to purchase homes, and the Levitts justified the clause by stating that it maintained the value of the properties, since most whites at the time preferred not to live in mixed communities. The Jewish Levitt barred Jews from Strathmore, his first pre-Levittown development on Long Island in New York, and he refused to sell his homes to African Americans. His sales contracts also forbade the resale of properties to blacks through restrictive covenants, although in 1957 a Jewish couple resold their house to the first black family to live in a Levitt home. Levitt's all-white policies also led to civil rights protests in Bowie, Maryland in 1963. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties Union opposed Levitt's racist policies, and the Federal Housing Administration prepared to refuse mortgages on his next Levittown.
The settlement’s name now colloquially means a suburb with largely identical homes, with areas like Bayville and Dunewood on Long Island nicknamed “Levittown on the Sound” and “Levittown on the Bay” respectively. The Levittown homes also inspired the creation of a planned community in Willingboro Township, New Jersey, which unlike Levittown, Long Island actually became a majority African-American neighborhood. These Levittown communities throughout the United States reveal both the attempts at housing reform and recovery from World War II while also highlighting the practices which contribute to our country’s systematic racism. Levitt Building Systems, Inc. was the modular homebuilding subsidiary of Levitt and Sons, Inc. The company was established in 1970, and the factory and headquarters were based in new 140,000-sq. Ft. plant built on a former wheat field south of Battle Creek, Michigan.
If you know of any other Levitt communities, then please contact LevittownBeyond and they will be posted here. Dates have been included where possible, which should be accurate to within one year based on advertisements or dated brochures if the actual dates were not available. These dates are intended to reflect the year that community was opened to the public for sales and the year that construction was completed and final occupancy taken. The Little Home of One’s Own was a subsidiary myth of the American Dream that was a key part of Charlie Chaplin’s conception of the American Dream before it became a part of Modern Times.
An additional 4,000 homes in Levittown, which before the Levitts was rather undeveloped, were added to construction plans. As thousands of people began buying these inexpensive homes, the community changed its name from Island Trees to Levittown in 1948. By 1951, Levittown and the surrounding area included over 17,000 Levitt-designed homes, including the much newer “ranch house” design. Levittown was the first residential homebuilding project in the world. The first Levittown houses, which are only available to World War II veterans and their families, are $6,990, with a down payment of almost nothing. Levitt built 17,447 houses over the next four years on average, each of which houses 12 people.
