Issues & Perspectives; 1945-2000

Caroline Jones

May 14, 2015

Mrs. Lawson B Block

Suburban Life

Suburbs are looked at with nostalgia by most, reflecting on their childhoods and all the safety and love they felt from their neighbors. The perfect family living in the cookie cutter home is the general stereotype of life in suburbs. Being extremely common in the United States, I have never even questioned how suburbs came to be or how they impacted this country. I focused my researched mainly around a suburb named Levittown, because it best represented American suburbs evolving from 1945 to current suburbs. I had a difficult time finding information on suburbs other than Levittown, because it was the most popular, and had the largest impact during its growth. Growing to popularity due to several historical events, suburbs transformed the era culturally and technologically while innovating the living conditions in the 50’s.

At request of the federal government, Abraham Levitt and his two sons, Alfred and William, built Levittown as housing for returning military personnel. The postwar American industry was a well oiled machine and had mastered the techniques of mass production. The Levitt’s applied this technique to the construction of homes in a twenty seven step process, and within one year their team was building thirty six homes a day. Similar to now a day’s suburbs, every home in Levittown shared a similar layout, giving residents a feeling of stability. The GI Bill of 1944 provided veterans with college tuition and home mortgage subsidies, which gave the returning veterans a subtle transition to their new peaceful life. Designed around the idea of a protected community, it wasn’t long until Levittown was inhabited by more than just veterans.

American’s fled to Levittown due to post war and post depression. The advertisement of this Nassau County suburb emphasized the beautiful grass and open spaces. Providing safety, larger homes, an escape from city life, and affordable housing, everyone wanted to live there. The baby boom also played a large role into the growth of suburbs. With easy access to loans, affording houses in the suburbs increased opportunities for lots of Americans. Having two bedrooms, one bath, and a kitchen near the back of the home so the mother could keep an eye on the children playing, was the perfect layout for young American families. Racial fears were quite common in this time, and encouraged families to move away from the problems they encountered in the city.

Levittown was the perfect example of a suburbia, or as defined by Kenneth Jackson in Crabgrass Frontier: “Suburbia...is a manifestation of such fundamental characteristics of American society as conspicuous consumption, a reliance upon the private automobile, upward mobility, the separation of family nuclear units, the widening division between work and leisure, and the tendency toward racial and economic exclusiveness.” It was a symbol of can-do for some American’s, and for others it was seen as conformity and exclusion. Life in suburbia is not very different than life today in some suburbs. Just like we might borrow our neighbor's honey, they would carpool, babysit, and even help out if a neighbor was having a hard time paying bills. This community didn’t come without a laundry-list of rules that was required to be followed by every citizen.

From the layout of the streets to the looks of the homeowners, suburbs followed a picture perfect blueprint. The roads were designed to redirect traffic to the outside of the community to keep the noise level down. A mutual high expectation of home maintenance was felt among all neighbors living in the suburbs, because no one wanted to be the one neighbor with brown grass. This is now referred to as “keeping up with the Joneses”. The residents were almost as homogeneous as the homes in certain suburbs, such as Levittown. Many Americans did not like suburbs due to the racial exclusion. Some of the first residents of Levittown moved there due to their racial fears, because the homes were almost never sold to anyone but white buyers. Levitt defended his discrimination by believing it was the social customs of the time, "As a company our position is simply this: 'We can solve a housing problem, or we can try to solve a racial problem. But we cannot combine the two.’” Even when nonwhites were able to purchase homes in suburbs, they were faced with problems, due to not being tolerated. It’s obvious why city people would break away from their beloved apartments for a home on their own green grass.

Even though the requirements that residents must follow in the suburbs seem unnecessary, the urban lifestyle is an example of life without it. There’s not a happy medium when it comes to wealth in the city, either extremely wealthy upper class or less than lower class. The poverty in the cities created crime, the overcrowding created widespread of diseases, and hope of becoming rich created gambling problems. These problems are inevitable in the city, but the rules in the suburban community restricted them from happening. The glamorous life existed in the city, but there was no more penthouses than there were slums. The majority of city dwellers chose having to commute to work rather than a “glamorous” city life.

The growth of suburbs affected the country as a whole, and by 1960 one third of the country lived in suburbs. It came at the perfect time in history, following the Great Depression, war, and the baby boom, which allowed citizens to find a place of peace and tranquility. It caused a dramatic change in relationships, such as friendly neighbors, and a life unattainable in the city. Automobiles were popular before suburbs, but with suburbs becoming so common, it was the first time that they were seen as a necessity. I am glad I chose this topic, because suburbs are a concept everyone knows about, but I previously knew nothing about how they affected the country for the better. Even though the growth of suburbs had it’s ups and downs, it’s transformation into a new sense of life that revolved around family values, makes its growth one of the most significant in American history.

Suburbia in the 1950's

Newspaper article about Levittown

Construction of Levittown 

An aerial view of suburbs in 1950

Suburban life in the 1950's

Annotated Bibliography:

US History Scene This site had tons of information on Levittown and explained all the ups and downs the community encountered. It also included useful quotes that helped me to understand what suburbia truly is, and the both the good and bad opinions that Americans had about suburbs.

US History This article taught me the reasons people moved to suburbs, such as racial fears, affordable housing, and the desire to leave decaying cities. It included the details of the homes and the reasoning behind the blue print.

University of Washington This site told me that economic and technical transformations are not the only reason people were eager to move. The impact the war and the Great Depression had on America as a whole, made suburban homes a wish of the majority of the country.

University of Maryland  This website told me about a new fact that played a large role into desire to live in suburbia: automobiles. It also explained the impact the G.I. Bill played for veterans. This site is manly about the veterans living in suburbia.

Boundless: The Growth of Suburbs  This online textbook continued to explain the details of why American's wanted to move to a suburbia. It also provided information on life in the city, and the reasoning behind they wanted to move.

Postwar America This online book taught me the process the Levittown home builders took in building homes extremely fast. It also included Levitt's reasoning for why he wanted the neighborhood to be mainly white.

US History: The Underside of Urban Life This article told me about urban living and the difficulties the citizens went through. It gave me a clearer understanding of why one would want to live in the suburbs if they were living in the city.

History Net I learned a lot about Levittown from this site. It talks about the good and bad of suburbs in this time period, and how life was for the citizens living in an American suburb.

Guardian This site taught me about suburb life and values as well as speaking a little about urban life and values. I noticed the similarities between current suburbia and the beginning of suburban living while reading this article.