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• 1 2022-12-06T11:26:40-08:00 Levittown 19 A brief history of Levittown, some of the first suburban developments post-WWII which gave birth to the "cookie-cutter" method of home construction plain 2022-12-12T06:28:13-08:00 With 4,000 acres of land purchased by Levitt’s company, Levitt and Sons, Levitt began to implement his designs on Long Island. “Levittown itself arguably embodied the best and worst of the postwar American story; it was a result of the entrepreneurship and ingenuity that has come to define the American spirit, but it also participated in the violent prejudice that has also been part of American history. ” According to U.S. History Scene, a home in this development went up in just sixteen minutes. For convenience and cost-effectiveness, Levitt built only two different housing models. The homes in Levittown seemed to be stocked with ultimate luxuries: equipped with the most up-to-date appliances like refrigerators and even TVs, and the landscaping and streets were mapped with consideration, creating an almost paradise-like world away from the crowded city streets. Why was suburbia viewed through such a fairy-tale lens? Some academics posit that “American families found stability and protection within the suburban home,” which so many Americans clung to after the devastation of back-to-back World Wars and the destitution of the Depression. Families desired to achieve what their parents were robbed of during these times. As Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “A nation of homeowners, of people who own a real share in their land, is unconquerable.
  
  
  
  However, this utopia was not extended to all. The Levitts retained that Black families be refused homes, just one of the ways that Levitt and Sons stringently maintained control of their developments. Originally stated within Levittown leases that the buyer must not be and would not allow any home be “occupied by any other person other than members of the Caucasian race, ” this eventually was deemed unconstitutional, yet the status quo remained unchanged. Within just a few years, Levittown became the largest all-white community in the United States .
  
  
  
  Accounts such as the ‘Levittown: A Living History’ documentary blatantly ignore the inequalities and oftentimes brutal exclusion these developments caused. Although such explicit anti-Black policies outlined in housing contracts were subsequently outlawed, William Levitt still rejected any non-white applications to his developments. This was eventually challenged when the NAACP filed a lawsuit against mortgage providers representing Black veterans who had been denied home applications. Thurgood Marshall himself represented these families in court, but the case was ultimately dismissed under the decision that preventing discrimination was not the duty of those agencies. Despite this, Black families managed to secure homes in Levittown when the original buyers decided to sell, though they subsequently received backlash and harassment by fellow residents of the neighborhoods. One Black family bought their Pennsylvania Levittown home in 1957 from the original homeowners. However, they “faced endless harassment as well as implicit and explicit threats of violence from other residents in the community, with little help from the local police to keep the mobs of angry racists from congregating outside their home day and night.
  
  
  
  Stories like these highlight how, even when Black families managed to secure suburban housing, they endured continual onslaught from white community members that oftentimes extended to violence.