What did a Levittown home look like?

Levittown in Long Island, New York, is widely recognized as the first modern American suburb. It had swimming pools, shopping centers, and backyards. Each home looked the same in Levittown — they were all built in the Cape Cod-style and featured the same floorplan. They each cost around $7,000.

Are there any original Levittown houses left?

Short answer: Probably not. Long answer: The homes have all been altered, expanded or rebuilt since the first house went up 70 years ago, according to the Levittown Historical Society. Levittown began as the first modern suburb in the United States.

What did Levittown look like?

Standard Levittown houses included a white picket fence, green lawns, and modern appliances. Sales in the original Levittown began in March 1947. 1,400 homes were purchased during the first three hours.

What were the two main styles of houses in Levittown?

THE PENNSYLVANIAN & THE COLONIAL Introduced during the last few years of construction, the Pennsylvanian and the Colonial were built in much smaller numbers and in only a few sections. Both styles reappeared in his third development in Willingboro, New Jersey.

Why do Levittown houses not have basements?

In Bucks County, no basement construction came easier, since most of the four municipalities over which Levittown spreads did not have strong zoning. It was still farms and small towns.

What were the names of the different styles of Levittown homes?

Levitt and Sons only built six models of houses in Levittown, all single-family dwellings with lawns: the Levittowner, the Rancher, the Jubilee, the Pennsylvanian, the Colonial and the Country Clubber, with only modest exterior variations within each model.

How much did a typical Levittown home cost?

$584,776. The typical home value of homes in Levittown is $584,776. This value is seasonally adjusted and only includes the middle price tier of homes.

Who usually bought a home in a Levittown?

Bill Levitt only sold houses to white buyers, excluding African Americans from buying houses in his communities even after. By 1953, the 70,000 people who lived in Levittown constituted the largest community in the United States with no black residents.

Why did all of the Levittown houses look so similar?

And they did so with the same aesthetic uniformity as the auto industry in its early years, initially stamping out house after house on the same architectural plan, drawn up by brother Alfred Levitt, albeit with subtle variations of colour, window treatment and roofline.

Why were Levittown houses so affordable?

Levittown’s very existence, in fact, owes to a rare act of American socialism: the 1948 Housing Bill, which loosened billions of dollars in credit and gave every American the chance to get one of those five-percent-down, 30-year mortgages in the first place.

Why were Levittown homes so affordable?

What does Levittown look like today?

Today, Levittown is more diverse. According to 2017 census estimates, the population of nearly 52,000 is 14.6 percent Hispanic or Latino and 7.3 percent Asian, an increase of 7.8 and 4.5 percent since 2000. In that same period, the percentage of black or African-American residents rose from 0.5 percent to 1.4 percent.

How much did a Levittown house cost?

Available only to World War II veterans and their families–and only white veterans at that–the first Levittown house cost $6,990 with nearly no money down. Levitt built 17,447 houses in the next four years.

How much did a Levittown home cost?

What was Levittown in 1950s?

Levittown in the 1950s. Levitt and Sons, a construction company, purchased a 7-square-mile plot of potato and onion farms in Long Island in 1947. They set out to build one of the first uniform suburban community in the US.

How many houses have been built in Levittown?

Levittown has 17,447 houses, one of which was built every 16 minutes during the peak of its construction boom. People flocked to home sale events to get themselves a slice of suburbia. A home sale in Levittown.

Did Levittowns invent the suburbs?

To many of those families, the Levittowns in Long Island, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania were the answer to their prayers. The Levitts certainly did not invent the business of building suburbs, but in many ways, they perfected it.