Suburbanization

As the Industrial Revolution (1877–1900) turned America away from agriculture toward an economy based on industry and labor, cities grew. As cities developed, it became clear that mass transportation was needed to help people get from place to place. By the mid-1880s, the streetcar had become the primary source of urban transportation. Trolleys (electrified streetcars) replaced them later that decade, and in 1904 the first underground subway opened in New York City. By the 1940s, the city's subway lines provided more than eight million rides a day.

Since people now had convenient travel, they were able to live in neighborhoods on the outskirts of city limits called suburbs. The suburbs tended to attract people of the same race, ethnicity, or income. By the end of World War II (1939–45), houses in the suburbs were in great demand as sixteen million soldiers returned home and America enjoyed a promising postwar economy.

Levittown

One particular suburb was the model upon which all others were built. Levittown, New York , started out as a low-cost experiment in mass-produced housing and became the most famous suburb in the United States.

William Levitt (1907–1994) was a homebuilder with a vision. He recognized the immediate need for inexpensive housing when World World II ended, and he convinced his father and younger brother to divide some family property, a former potato field, into small lots and build mass-produced homes for war veterans and their families. The suburb became known as Levittown.

Levitt & Sons publicly announced its plan to build two thousand rental homes on May 7, 1947. Within two days, one thousand of those homes had already been rented. Levitt knew he had to get these houses built quickly, so to save time, he decided to build on concrete slabs rather than include basements, which was a common feature of homes at the time. He used the production-line technique to get Levittown homes built— all lumber came precut from a family-owned lumberyard in California , and each worker focused on just one job. To keep costs down, Levitt hired only nonunion contractors so that he did not have to pay them as much. By July 1948, the company was constructing thirty houses a day.

When the rest of the two thousand homes were rented before they were even built, Levitt decided to construct another four thousand. The community had its own schools, post office, phone service, and street-lights. By 1949, Levitt & Sons stopped building rental units and began building homes it could sell for $7,990. Buyers needed just $90 for a deposit and paid $58 a month to buy not only the house, but also the appliances within. Each house measured 32 feet (10 meters) by 25 feet (8 meters). There were five models, and the only difference between them was the exterior color, the roofline, and the placement of windows.

Levittown was such an amazing success that Levitt appeared on the cover of Time magazine on July 3, 1950. Levitt was the idea man, organizer, and salesman of the company. His brother, Alfred, was the designer of the homes, while their father, Abe, designed and landscaped the properties. By 1950, the Levitts had built nearly seventeen thousand homes. War veterans and their wives began raising children in their community. The suburb was lined with sidewalks, and fences were not allowed. This blurred property lines and gave Levittown dwellers great expanses of lawn and common areas in which to play and socialize. Everyone's backyard on any given block intersected with their neighbors' to form one gigantic, well-kept field.

Levittown today

The last Levittown house was purchased in 1951, and Levitt & Sons enjoyed the distinction of having conceived and developed the largest housing development ever constructed by one building company. In the twenty-first century, most Levitt houses still stand and remain occupied, although they have been expanded and remodeled to meet modern needs.

Levitt & Sons sold the company in 1968, after having built more than 140,000 houses around the world. They received $92 million in stock in ITT, the company that bought them. Most of it went to William Levitt. The Levitts had to agree not to build in the United States for ten years after the sale, so William Levitt built communities in Iran, Venezuela, and Nigeria. He funded the building of these suburbs with his ITT stock. Within four years, the stock lost 90 percent of its value, and Levitt found himself millions of dollars in debt.

Before his death in 1994, Levitt acknowledged Levittown as his crowning achievement. It was not fancy; it was not the best in terms of quality. But his famous suburb provided the answer to a national housing shortage at a time when people needed a place to call home.

Other suburbs

Just as Levittown was built for a specific population (war veterans), other suburbs were built for other specific groups. Most neighborhoods were built around a particular industry. As suburbs grew to include shops, restaurants, and entertainment venues of their own, residents soon had no reason to travel outside their suburban limits for daily needs.

Through the years, as people desired to separate their home lives from their work lives, the suburban population grew. This trend continued into the twenty-first century, although an interesting phenomenon occurred. As communication technology, such as wireless communication, broadband, and e-mail developed, more and more Americans made the choice to work from home either full time or part-time. So while the trend to live in suburbs continued, the line between work and home life blurred. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, 46 percent of all Americans lived in the suburbs.