They filled the former farmland with quickly constructed, mostly identical homes, many in a simple Cape Cod style. Photo credit: Jon Smith.
Federal mortgage underwriting helped Levittown to boom. The Levittown swimming pool signified a new kind of lifestyle-one not previously available to the town's first residents. With no central downtown, strip malls housed businesses. The lack of a central downtown tied Levittown to another postwar trend: dependence on the automobile.
After World War II, ten million veterans came home to a massive housing shortage. Many of them were marrying and starting families. It had swimming pools, shopping centers, and backyards.
Each home looked the same in Levittown — they were all built in the Cape Cod-style and featured the same floorplan. Visit Insider's homepage for more stories. Before the s, people mostly lived in cities to be close to factory jobs. Everything changed in the s when soldiers returned from World War II, sparking the great migration to the suburbs.
The GI Bill made it easier to afford a new home, prompting this transition from urban to suburban. The Baby Boom started at the same time, causing many families to outgrow their city apartments. In response to this growing need for space, suburban communities popped up at faster rates in the '50s. The community grew fast.
In fact, a house was built every 16 minutes in Levittown. People flocked to home sale events to get themselves a slice of suburbia. Every house in Levittown was identical. The Levitt family called it "the best house in the US. The picturesque community was lined with greenery. In fact, a tree was planted every 28 feet in Levittown. Outdoor spaces, like backyards, became focal points. Inside each home, there were four rooms, a built-in TV set, and Hi-Fi for the radio.
But Levittown still has its original nine community swimming pools with playing fields and playgrounds, as well as remnants of the seven intimate shopping strips known as village greens. Levittown was the first truly mass-produced suburb and is widely regarded as the archetype for postwar suburbs throughout the country. It also offered working class families the ability to have their own piece of home away from the densely populated areas of urban life in major cities, which later lead to a migration of families to the suburbs.
To access suburban housing Americans needed transportation. This act facilitated a continual movement of people to the suburbs and enabled many Americans to raise their growing families in localities farther and farther from American cities. Levittown was the mass production of inexpensive suburban houses meant for young veterans and their wives. African Americans were excluded. It symbolized the flight to the suburbs, residential areas around cities doubled during this time. These Levittowns were able to grow thanks in large part to the GI Bill.
This law helped WWII veterans to afford homes by offering low interest home loans. Along with this, the ability of Americans to afford cars gave them the opportunity to live outside of the city. There is nothing wrong with me pointing out racism no matter the era or Government. Thanks for that education. Nowhere did I say YOU definitely said…and it was well within context.
My family moved into our Levittown home in I enjoyed meeting new friends and how the neighbors worked together as neighbors. The yards were still dirt and the streets were cement and the construction workers were still constructing homes in nearby neighborhoods. When our family drove around looking at the variety of styles I noticed the workers. Later in life I received original photos of different workers building Levittown,Pa which shows Levittown homes being built and this example.
So black people helped build communities they were forbade to live in…and? As is true all over the country. Asbestos roofs! They were apparently better quality to everyone involved — those who lived under them, who made them, who made loans on or insured the homes they were installed on, because they were fireproof.
This was an extremely important feature to homeowners all the way back to the early twenties who had been living in homes prior to that with wooden shingle roofs and open flame heat sources, where a few good sparks from the chimney picked up by the wind could land them on any nearby roof, including the home it came from of course, and begin a raging house fire.
More houses were lost that way than most any other in those times. Combined with certain types of cement and coloring materials, it could become home siding, with which the original Levittown homes were sided.
Yes, that asbestos. Yes, I know all about that stuff. This response alone was interesting, thank you. That is, minus the last sentence. I never said you Shari do not know about the risks of asbestos. No, you never said that, but I was not addressing you specifically in the last bit, but also anyone and everyone else who could read my answer. The problem here is the unqualified lack of expression of several factors most important in interpersonal communications.
The things that are difficult if not impossible to include in written communications. Things like body language, eye expression, facial expressions in general, tone of voice, inflection, and so forth. But, even in the 21st century, the ability to do two very simple things in these kinds of messages, and in text messages are STILL missing!
What I mean is color, and underlining! I have yet to find that capability in any smartphone platform I have examined to date! Not all posts have to be fluffed up with too many words. Let it be. But alas here you are, breathe. Research would have uncovered the reality of the Levittown in Bowie, Md, which is a healthy racial mix, reflecting the employment policies of the federal government and military, where its residents work.
The Levittowns are a reflection of the larger communities, and the financing policies, where they are located. There was a tradeoff, which these comments have ignored. Each community was built with neighborhood schools, parks and community shopping center, sidewalks, all built by Levitt. Minimal need for school busses; the planning allowed all kids to safely walk to school.
Sewage and water plants were financed or built as required. The mass production system of factory manufactured panellized construction was invented by Levitt, and is now the standard nationwide. This included framing innovations that anticipated the hurricane code standards required decades later. The later Levittowns provided for economic diversity also; but bank lending practices dictated separate streets and neighborhoods for the larger more costly homes.
Social progress in the US has always been a bitter struggle, one that is still ongoing, years after the Civil War. Levitt housed hundreds of thousands of families in a hurry, in neighborhoods that have held their value, and today exhibit an extraordinary degree of physical diversity. Think about the options: publicly financed high rise housing, most of which was imploded three or four decades after they were built? An aunt and uncle stayed in their VA financed Levittown home until moving to Assisted Living at age
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