Suburbia

The 1950s saw the rise of suburban living in America. After World War II ended in 1945, millions of soldiers returned from military service to enter civilian life. They soon married and started families. Eager to raise their children away from the clutter and dangers of cities, and able—often for the first time in their lives—to afford their own homes (the war had been preceded by the Great Depression, which had lasted more than a decade), they accepted jobs in cities, but bought homes in the towns surrounding the cities, creating a boom in suburban housing.

A milestone in suburban housing came in 1950, when William J. Levitt and his sons began a trend by building cheap, identical houses in a fabricated community called Levittown, on Long Island. The homes were functional and unimaginative, and sold so quickly that new Levittowns sprang up outside Philadelphia and in...