This section contains 380 words (approx. 1 page at 400 words per page) |
When World War II ended in 1945, some ten million American soldiers were discharged from the armed forces. To shelter them, housing develop- ments were built outside the city. Though suburbs existed in America before the fifties, they were nothing like those to come. The most infamous and influential plan for suburbia was Levittown, located on Long Island, New York. On July 3, 1950, William J. Levitt appeared on the cover of Time magazine in front of a row of identical boxlike houses on freshly bulldozed land. The caption read: "House Builder Levitt. For Sale: A New Way of Life." First on Long Island, then near Philadelphia, and in New Jersey, Levitt helped model the suburbia of the 1950s. In October 1947, the first Levittown home was purchased, just one of many mass-produced, affordable, look-alike houses characterizing 1950s suburbia. These developments helped foment middle-class migration to the suburbs and the...
This section contains 380 words (approx. 1 page at 400 words per page) |