The Levittowners of 1953

Early Levittown was so typically 1950's, so very much an icon of post-WWII America - and so very much the blueprint for, and quintessential example of, suburbia - that it's oftentimes difficult to remember the ways in which it was utterly exceptional.

New 1947 Levitt & Sons Cape Cods were running about 30% cheaper than the national average for a new house at the time and the homeowner was sufficiently younger than in later years. (Indeed, in 1950, the average Levittown homeowners was 23 years old). And because 95% of all Levittown homes were built by Levitt & Sons between 1947 and 1951, they tended to have a narrower price range than was, and still is, apt to be discovered in surrounding communities. It is in this context, of the at once stereotypical and utterly unique, that this erstwhile era must be evaluated.    

A study of 191 Levittown families in 1953 found rather extraordinary, even unexpected, results. The husbands averaged 33.7 years old and their spouses 29.2 years. What the press dubbed "America's youngest community" in 1947 was beginning to age. Still, 60% of all couples had 1-2 children with 60% of those children being of kindergarten age - hardly a shock during the Baby Boom when there were more Americans below the age of 12 than at any time in U.S. history before or since. And yet, 16% of those couples were childless.

Another extraordinary finding in this study conducted by Dr. John D. Allison of New York University, is that, in an age of one-income households, some 18% of the wives held jobs that accounted for nearly 30% of the family income. This probably can be explained by the fact that Levittown in 1953 was a low-income community. The average Levittown family earnings of $6,079 per year was 10% lower than the Nassau County average. (What actually differs from Levittown's proportionately lower income families in 2013 is the greater purchasing power of the 1953 dollar. Taxes, mortgages, and rents today consume a greater proportion of the family's income - up to 80% in some instances). The overwhelming majority of the 191 Levittown households surveyed by Dr. Allison were blue-collar or lower management with few professionals in the sample although 7.5% were engineers.     

How did this curious profile, a paradox when juxtaposed with the commonly-perceived notions of 1950's suburbia come to pass? Consider that "only" 76.44% of the husbands were veterans; the exclusively-veterans practice having fallen the wayside after July 1, 1948 when Levitt & Sons began selling the houses rather than offering them only as rentals. (Although the Company continued to give veterans preferential treatment). Too, the Housing and Rent Act of 1949 made homeownership more attractive to people from a wider socioeconomic demographic with the Federal Housing Authority guaranteeing up to 90% the value of the house.

By 1953, the Levittown "pioneers" who stood overnight in long queues when Levitt & Sons were pouring their first concrete foundations on old potato fields were giving way to buyers in very different circumstances. The Allison survey, for example, discovered that 17% of these 191 sample families were originally from Levittown itself - having traded-in those rented Cape Cods for Ranch homeownership. Another 16.2% hailed from other parts of Nassau County. The great diaspora from New York City seems to have changed too in the six years between the first Levitt & Sons house and Allison's study. Only 15% of the sample were from Brooklyn and 23.5% from Queens. One can surmise that the success of Levitt & Sons in mass-producing homes was so quickly emulated by other builders fast at work in central Nassau County by 1953 that the aforesaid diaspora was being more widely dispersed.    

The Levittowners of 1953 intimated that, notwithstanding the stereotype of explosive in the 1947-51 period followed by a largely static mode, there was already the basis of a greater dynamic afoot than hitherto assumed and deeply ingrained in the myth of suburban cookie-cutter conformity.    

Want to learn more about the history of Levittown and the surrounding communities? Visit www.levittownhistoricalsociety.org