CITIES

LEVITTOWN 60 YEARS LATER

BILL BLEYER, NEWSDAY - The area of Long Island that would become
synonymous with suburbia was farmland on the edge of the Hempstead
Plains until William J. Levitt arrived in 1947 to build the development
that shares his surname. Levitt, then 40, broke ground for the first of
the 17,000 homes that would pop up on 1,000 acres of potato farms 15
miles east of New York City on July 1, 1947. He earned his nickname as
"the Henry Ford of Housing" by building fast, using mass-production
techniques. By breaking down the construction process into 27 operations
done by specialized teams, Levitt could sell houses for between $8,000
and $12,000 and still make a $1,000 profit.

To mark the 60th anniversary of the birth of Levittown, the Long Island
Museum of American Art, History & Carriages in Stony Brook has assembled
what it is calling the the most comprehensive exhibit ever done on the
landmark affordable housing development and its creator. . .

Levittown and the suburban sprawl it ushered in was the product of
almost two decades of repressed home-building and baby-rearing during
the Great Depression and World War II. When the GIs came home in 1945,
they wanted to start families and have a place for their families to
live. . .

The first government-supported housing program for working-class
Americans allowed the vets to buy starter houses with low-interest
mortgages with little money down where before they would have remained
high school-educated renters. . .

But there was also a downside. Thanks to Levittown and other similar
developments, rapid growth combined with limited or nonexistent zoning
controls led to sprawl and, by some standards, unimaginative
cookie-cutter subdivisions that bred highways and shopping malls and
congealing traffic.

And even some of the vets with GI Bill money could not obtain a starter
home. When Levittown opened Oct. 1, 1947, the rental and purchase
contracts - one is displayed in the Stony Brook exhibit - contained the
now infamous Clause 25: "The tenant agrees not to permit the premises to
be used or occupied by any person other than members of the Caucasian
race."

Levitt explained the policy to The Saturday Evening Post in 1954: "If we
sell one house to a Negro family, then 90 to 95 percent of our white
customers will not buy into the community. That is their attitude, not
ours. We did not create it and we cannot cure it. As a company, our
position is simply this: we can solve a housing problem or we can try to
solve a racial problem. But we cannot combine the two."

While blacks were fighting to get into Levittown, others who made it
weren't always thrilled. The exhibit includes three sarcastic comic
strip panels loaned by Bill Griffith, a nationally syndicated cartoonist
who does Zippy the Pinhead cartoons and who grew up in Levittown. He
didn't like the uniformity or conformity, as his cartoons make very
clear. . .

After preparing the exhibit, Ruff said he came to new conclusions about
Levitt and his development. "He's one of these extraordinary,
complicated historical figures, like a Robert Moses, who changes the
scope of the landscape but has both his foibles and his positive side.
He was an amazing philanthropist, but everybody knows about his
downfall." In 1968, Levitt & Sons was sold to ITT Corp. for $92 million
in stock. Levitt used the stock as collateral to build subdivisions in
other countries, in locations such as Iran, Venezuela and Nigeria, but
the stock tanked, the projects failed and Levitt ended up millions of
dollars in debt. He died in 1994.

http://www.newsday.com/features/printedition/longislandlife/
ny-licov5066940jan28,0,2930886.story?coll=ny-lilife-print

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