Expanding the American Dream: Building and Rebuilding Levittown by Barbara M. Kelly

Abstract

878 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGYAND CULTURE Expanding the American Dream: Building and Rebuilding Levittown. By Barbara M. Kelly. Albany: State University ofNewYork Press, 1993. Pp. xii+284; illustrations, notes, appendixes, bibliography, index. $49.50 (cloth); $16.95 (paper). Common perceptions of Levittown invoke images of identical massproduced houses, yet in Expanding the American Dream Barbara M. Kelly ably demonstrates the ways in which Levittown “pioneers” exerted their individualitywhile adopting the dominant middle-class values ofpostwar America. The initial six thousand Levitt homes were built as rental units beginning in October 1947, supported by Federal Housing Administra­ tion (FHA) and Veterans Administration housing programs, and aimed at relieving the housing crunch precipitated by returning working-class veterans. These four-room minimalist Cape Cod-style homes, while promoted to the working class, nonetheless embodied middle-class homeownership values such as privatization, domesticity, separate spheres, and conformity. The author argues that far from imposing these values on a reluctant population, Levittown citizens embraced their new suburban lifestyle as an unprecedented opportunity to participate in the traditional American dream, that of upward mobility and the acquisition of private property. Kelly focuses on the interaction between Levittowners and their homes. Once the first rental units were converted to proprietary housing and the second phase of 11,500 ranch-styles begun, owners immediately started to reshape their homes through remodeling and additions, shedding their working-class image, raising their neighbor­ hood to a new socioeconomic level, and thus deriving new status from that of the community and from their membership in the homeowning class. In postwarAmerica, homeownership outweighed other indexes of social standing such as education, income, and occupation. Levitt homes gained notoriety as much for their production methods as for the scale of the development. Teams of workers moved from house to house performing discrete, standardized tasks, creating an assembly line in reverse in what was termed an “on-site” factory that saw a production rate of up to 150 completed homes per week. The use of modem building materials such as gypsum board and asbestos shingles engendered hostility from the building trades and raised the anxiety level of neighboring communities who feared that inferior construction would create massive slums. These fears proved unfounded in that the homes not only maintained their integrity over the years but now sell for upwards of $200,000. The shift in 1949 to the construction of the Levittown ranch repre­ sented a change from a seller’s to a buyer’s market. Even though the interior design of the four-room house remained nearly the same, certain amenities such as a built-in television, finished attic, carport, and fireplace were added. Not only did the attic and carport provide space for playrooms and rec rooms, they also served as temporary workshops TECHNOLOGYAND CULTURE Book Reviews 879 for husbands and fathers to build the necessary additions to the house. But since nearly all the buyers were veterans in the same age group, these newer models exhibited a limited response to concerns offamilies whose children would soon be approaching adolescence. The intensely gendered domesticity of togetherness embedded in the design of the house reinforced the preciousness of the idealized nuclear family whose very existence within the home would serve to combat the external threats of the Cold War. This book has a major structural flaw. Too much of Kelly’s supporting evidence is contained within the surfeit ofendnotes. Ninety-two pages of notes support 172 pages of text. For example, Kelly reveals in an endnote (p. 229, n. 22) the startling fact that the U.S. Treasury Department funded an episode of “Father Knows Best” in which the Andersons’ hometown falls under Communist rule. Kelly fails to make explicit the obvious connection between this government effort to reinforce middle-class values as a bulwark against Communism and government support of postwar suburban housing developments. In another endnote (p. 240, n. 21), Kelly states, “It is the underlying thesis of this book that the redefinition in class which resulted from the housing policies of the FHA and the GI Bill is among the most important contributions of the Roosevelt/Truman years.” A statement such as this demands to be part of the text...