From 1946 there were two urgent pushes to the housing market: America's post-war prosperity and the baby boom of 1946-51. Mass production strategies William had learned building military housing could work for domestic housing, so they purchased a 7 square mile tract of Long Island’s fields New York. Levittown’s very existence was dependent on an important act of American community development: the 1948 Housing Bill, which freed up billions of dollars in credit and gave many families the chance to get a 5%-down, 30-year mortgages in the first place.
Starting as America’s proto-typical post-war planned community, the Levittown project began mass-producing single-family homes, foreshadowing a wave of migration from cities. For middle-class WW2 ex-servicemen on G.I loans, Levittown was an affordable dream, a chance to escape the city’s crowded blocks.
Advertisement for beautiful Levittowner houses
Note the support for ex-servicemen
The Levitts’ American dream had an aesthetic uniformity, each house being based on one core architectural plan. The development eventually contained carefully laid out symmetrical roads, public swimming pools, baseball fields, parks, shopping clusters in the centre, churches and schools. And a Veterans Memorial Park.
By mid 1952, families were moving in at 500 per month. The first homes sold for $7,990 with a 5% down payment (0% for ex-servicemen). Most of Levittown’s male residents happily commuted to good jobs in Manhattan. But critics had grave reservations: Harper’s called the little Levitt house “American suburbia reduced to its logical absurdity”, and a “uniform environment from which escape is impossible”. Did the critics not understand that ex-servicemen needed peace and security for their families, above all else?
By mid 1952, families were moving in at 500 per month. The first homes sold for $7,990 with a 5% down payment (0% for ex-servicemen). Most of Levittown’s male residents happily commuted to good jobs in Manhattan. But critics had grave reservations: Harper’s called the little Levitt house “American suburbia reduced to its logical absurdity”, and a “uniform environment from which escape is impossible”. Did the critics not understand that ex-servicemen needed peace and security for their families, above all else?
Each house was differently shaped or differently oriented on the block
The critics were wrong. Houses in these developments were less alike than the blocks of flats and the old pre-war bungalows which lined the city streets. In any case, though Levitt built cheapish, fully functioning houses and built them well, he left almost everything else to the new home owners. They were encouraged to customise their homes, whether of the standard utilitarian Cape Cod design or another. Excited families focused on their own interior décoration, windows, rooflines, landscaping and paint colours to show their individuality and creativity. What families most wanted was a sunny, grassy back yard for their children, free from city pollution.
Levittown life had its communal aspects and shared regulations eg no homeowner could fence off a private yard from the shared green and the lawns had to be mowed every week. And they had a strong sense of shared responsibility. They would babysit, drive neighbours around, help out with mortgage payments if needed.
British and Australian historians always had trouble understanding the intense American loathing of Levittown. The “general lust for conformity”, and a “blind, desperate clinging to safety and security at any price” was the equivalent of calling the Levitt project as socialist and dangerous. Based on the horrors the ex-servicemen had seen in WW2, safety and security sounded like ideals, not a socialist threat. To my baby-boomer ears, bedroom communities of housing developments in the industrialised North sounded enticing.
Why did Levittown become known for its “complacent racism"? The Federal Housing Administration, established in the 1930s, had refused to insure mortgages in black neighbourhoods; they incentivised the construction of suburban communities with the promise of financial help, provided that they exclude black buyers. William Levitt cooperated, partially ensuring that Levittown was quickly successful. It was a question of economics, not racism, he said. Now note the following Levittown clause: The tenant agrees not to permit the premises to be occupied by any person other than members of the Caucasian race. But the employment and maintenance of other than Caucasian domestic servants shall be permitted.
As William Levitt personally rejected racism, there could have been only two explanations to Levittown’s racist entry laws. Firstly Levittown was following the powerful social customs of the era, since it would certainly fail to attract residents if he rejected those customs. Secondly the growing power of Sen Joseph McCarthy and his colleagues was controlling peoples’ views, by terror, from late 1940s on.
War memorial
and open park land
As a result Levittown’s population was 100% white. It seemed that Brown v Board of Education (1954) and the nationwide racial integration that followed hardly touched Levittown.
In 1957 the Wechsler family members were committed humanist activists who found a perfect black family to buy their Levittown house; Bill and Daisy Myers were a young, educated couple with children and a GI loan. The Myers purchased the 3 bedroom house for $12,150. They moved in secretly, but very soon a mailman knocked on their door and asked to see the owner. “It happened. Niggers have moved into Levittown”, the mailman screamed.
Nearby a house was rented out to serve as Confederate Club House for the racist residents of Levittown, who saw the arrival of non-whites as an end to their idyll. This Levittown Betterment Committee flew the Confederate flag and “protected” an all-white Levittown! It wasn’t long before the Wechslers’ ex-home was defaced by the KKK and crosses were burned on lawns.
The Myers had support from Quakers, the American Jewish Congress and William Penn Centre. White couples babysat the Myers’ children and helped clean up the wreckage. Finally the State Attorney General got involved, issuing a formal complaint against the racists in Confederate House.
Calling Levittown “communist” was not as laughable as I thought. Though the American government tried to address the severe housing shortage by launching public housing programs, they were viciously vilified by right-wingers as a form of socialism. Sen McCarthy himself called housing projects “breeding grounds for communists”. Furthermore critics compared the architectural uniformity of Levittown as reminiscent of the conformity of Communist China.
6 comments:
Hello Hels, A while ago I read Herbert Gans' 1967 book on Levittown, The Levittowners, based on sociological studies he did in 1961 (he actually moved in so as to be part of the community). He mentions all kinds of tensions and struggles, between religious groups, between the new buyers and those who had previously been living in the area, etc. He cites that by his time there, racial integration was occurring very slowly and mainly without incident, but there was an undercurrent of nervousness, as people worried about property values, (or as we today can easily believe just plain practiced racism). He states that the the realtors were the most open about racial matters, fearing that if they sold a house to Black families then Whites would refuse to list their own houses with them.
--Jim
Hels my dad was well treated by the bank because he was an ex-serviceman, thankfully. They could not have afforded a new suburban home otherwise.
Parnassus
I think that families were so thrilled to have new homes, surrounded by their own gardens, instead of being crammed into polluted cities, that they quickly got on board. Yes there were tensions and struggles, but once all the primary schools, shopping centres and public parks were built, each planned community met the needs of post-WW2 baby-boomer families.
LMK
my dad too.... he bought a quarter acre block in McKinnon next to a primary school and eventually McKinnon High School. But it was the USA's 1948 Housing Bill that was brilliant: a 5%-down, 30-year mortgages except for ex-servicemen who didn't even need a 5% deposit. If I had come back from WW2 and recently got married, I would have jumped at a planned suburban community like Levittown.
The Americans seem to see anything that smacks of "The Common Good" as socialism . Its just nuts , a real blight on the society in my opinion .
mem,
*high 5, sister!" I had always assumed that Sen Joseph McCarthy was a nasty piece of work, but that most people were more sensitive to the needs of ordinary working families.
Yet these individual family homes, surrounded by private gardens, with primary schools, parks, baseball fields, GPs, dentists, churches and even shopping strips were viciously attacked by the critics. The suburb was socialist, communist, had identical housing, was absurdly suburban and impossible to escape from :( Good grief.
No wonder they don't have universal health care yet :(
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