Levitt & Sons

Levitt & Sons

• Founders: William and Alfred Levitt.
• Distinction: Created 20th century American suburbia.
• Primary products: Small, low-cost houses for the mass market.
• Total production: More than 140,000 houses around the world.
• Founder: William Levitt.
• Headquarters: Levittown, N.Y.
• Years in existence: 1929-1968.
• Value when sold: Company sold to ITT in 1968 for $92 million.


Fifty years after they first sprang up on a one-time Long Island potato farm, America’s suburbs offer an accurate reflection of the national experience that they undeniably helped shape. Critics within and without may scoff at their various deficiencies, but today, more than ever, the suburbs tend to exhibit the same general strengths and weaknesses as any slice of contemporary society today. They’re part Brady Bunch, part Simpsons, part American Beauty. They’re soccer, Scouts, and swim teams; malls, piano lessons, and lawnmowers. They’re also crowded senior centers, struggling single-parent households, embattled public schools, and trendy lattè bars. At the turn of the millennium, they are America.
The homebuilding family business called Levitt & Sons could not have envisioned any of this back in 1947, when it came up with a way to fill the pent-up housing demands that were raging across post-War America. The father-brotherbrother team simply wanted to shift its successful real estate development company in a direction that would take it to new heights. The trio never expected to create a concept that was so appealing—and so reproducible—that it would literally change the way people lived.
But that is precisely what happened when it broke ground on Levittown, N.Y.— the legendary and revolutionary mass-produced community that offered hopeful young couples the chance to buy their own detached single-family home in the country and escape the gritty and cramped places they were previously living. Not surprisingly, there was a mad rush to snap up the $7,990 ranch houses that Levitt and Sons built by the score on carefully planned streets with lyrical monikers like Pinetree Lane. Unrelenting demand led to even more Levittowns in neighboring states, along with countless similar developments that are built to this day in every corner of the world.

As early as the late 18th century, well-to-do Londoners often chose to live outside the city in which they conducted business. Low-density retreats from the hustle and bustle of urban life subsequently appeared near cities from Manchester to Chicago, and after the introduction of the automobile they helped Los Angeles define the term “sprawl.” But it wasn’t until the conclusion of World War II, and the enormous accompanying demand for middle-class housing, that the concept was institutionalized. For that, it took a family with a flair for both business and promotion.
William Levitt was 40 when he closed the deal that would forever enshrine his name in popular culture. Eighteen years earlier, he had formed Levitt & Sons with father Abraham (a lawyer and developer who leaned toward the more opulent style of suburban homes) and younger brother Alfred (an architect who once observed for 10 months as Frank Lloyd Wright built a wealthy publisher’s home). His responsibilities revolved around his talent for financing, advertising, and merchandising. In 1941, after erecting 2,350 government-funded housing units for defense workers in Norfolk, Va., he recognized his firm’s true calling. Six years later, he was ready to apply the lessons learned to the mass production of affordable tract homes for servicemen and servicewomen who were returning in droves from the war.
Levitt found the site he wanted midway between New York City and Long Island’s booming defense plants. He purchased a 1,000-acre potato farm in Nassau County near a town that was then named Island Trees. Even more than location, the key to success lay in the way he planned to build. In those days most developers operated independently and slowly. The majority dealt individually and directly with every dwelling they put up, and as a consequence rarely finished more than four a year. The Levitts, on the other hand, planned to complete as many as 40 a day. To do so, they cultivated a factory-like approach that Bill Levitt once likened to the auto industry in reverse. In Detroit the product moved and the workers stood still, whereas in Levittown the product stood still as the workers moved.
To equal the efficiency achieved at places such as the Ford Motor Company, the Levitts divided the process into 27 individual operations and assigned a specialized team to each. They designated a large parcel on the site as a centralized point for storing materials and performing steps like mixing concrete. They cut costs dramati cally by purchasing forests and building a sawmill in Oregon, and even by making their own nails. A squadron of their trucks fanned out across the development every morning with deliveries for each building location, where virtual armies of laborers would repeat the same tasks day after day. They also financed the massive operation in an equally innovative manner: by borrowing the necessary funds beforehand from saving-and-loan institutions, which was a novel practice at the time. When they combined these standardized practices and preassembled procedures, they achieved impressive industrial-size economies of scale that allowed them to keep their prices approximately $1,500 lower than any of their competitors and still turn a profit of around $1,000 per house.
With virtually no industry, taxes remain high. And like similar communities across the United States, the schools face growing challenges and the employment possibilities are shifting. But oldtimers and newcomers alike remain happy that they put down stakes on roads like Pasture Lane. And a smattering of second-generation Levittowners (who eagerly fled town as soon as they reached adulthood) have even started trickling back to the area as they reach their thirties. Once dismissed and disparaged, their hometown remains an organic legacy to those who created it and those who gave it life.