William Levitt

William Jaird Levitt was a highly influential American real estate developer. He is often called the father of modern American suburbia. This title reflects how he transformed the way people lived in large communities. He was named one of Time Magazine's "100 Most Influential People of the 20th Century" in 1998. His work helped define the growth of residential areas outside of major cities.

Levitt was born in 1907 to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York. His family history included ancestors who emigrated from Russia and Austria. His father, Abraham Levitt, founded the company Levitt & Sons in 1929. William attended New York University for three years before leaving. During World War II, he served as a lieutenant in the Navy Seabees. After the war, he recognized a massive need for affordable housing for returning veterans. This need was caused by post-war prosperity and the baby boom.

To meet this demand, Levitt pioneered the use of mass production in construction. He applied an assembly line method to house building, similar to Henry Ford's car factories. Instead of one crew building one house, specialized teams moved from house to house. Each team performed specific, incremental steps in a sequence. The entire building process was reduced to exactly 27 steps. This system allowed Levitt & Sons to complete a house in less than six weeks.

Levitt used several strategies to keep costs low for his customers. He built homes on concrete slabs rather than using traditional deep foundations. He also cut out middlemen by purchasing items like lumber and televisions directly from manufacturers. He even built his own factory to produce nails. To increase efficiency, he used new technology like spray painting. He also avoided union labor, which led to picket lines from workers. These methods allowed him to sell fully furnished homes for about $8,000 each. In today's money, that is roughly $95,000. Because of federal subsidies and the G.I. Bill, many buyers paid only $400 upfront.

His developments became famous and were often named Levittown. The first successful one was near Hempstead on Long Island. He expanded his reach to many other locations. In 1952, people bought over 17,000 homes in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He also developed Willingboro, New Jersey, and Belair at Bowie in Maryland. Levitt & Sons eventually grew into an international company. They built communities in Puerto Rico, France, and north central New Jersey.

Despite his success, Levitt's legacy is complicated by his policies regarding racial segregation. He refused to integrate his housing developments. He barred Jewish people from his Strathmore development on Long Island. He also refused to sell homes to African Americans. He used restrictive covenants in sales contracts to prevent Black families from reselling homes to other Black families. These policies led to civil rights protests in Bowie, Maryland, in 1963. Organizations like the NAACP and the ACLU opposed his racist policies. The Federal Housing Administration even threatened to refuse mortgages on his future projects. Levitt continued to plan whites-only developments despite these legal and social challenges.

By the late 1960s, Levitt was one of the wealthiest men in America. His fortune was estimated to be over $100 million. In July 1967, he sold his company to ITT for $92 million. At his peak, he was completing one house every 11 minutes. He had built more than 140,000 houses globally. However, his later years were marked by financial difficulty. He attempted several business ventures that failed, and he lost much of his wealth. He also faced legal issues regarding building code violations and the use of funds from his foundation. Levitt died of kidney disease in 1994 at the age of 86.