Local city information for Levittown, NY

Levittown, a suburb of New York City, is a hamlet in the Town of Hempstead located on Long Island in Nassau County, New York. Levittown is mid way between the villages of Hempstead and Farmingdale. As of the 2000 census, the community had a total population of 53,067.

Levittown gets its name from its builder, the firm of Levitt & Sons, Inc., which built it as a planned community between 1947 and 1951. Levittown was the first truly mass-produced suburb and is widely regarded as the archetype for postwar suburbs throughout the country.


The building firm, Levitt and Sons, headed by Abraham Levitt and his two sons, William and Alfred, built four planned communities called "Levittown" (in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Puerto Rico), but Levittown, New York was the first. Levitt and Sons designs are prevalent in the older portion of Buffalo Grove, Illinois.

Levittown was built on what used to be potato farms in an area previously known as Island Trees. Levitt and Sons built the community with an eye towards speed, efficiency and cost-effective construction, which methods led to a production rate of 30 houses a day by July of 1948.
They used pre-cut lumber and nails shipped from their own factories in Blue Lake, California and built on concrete slabs, as they had done in a previous planned community in Norfolk, Virginia. This necessitated negotiating a change in the building code, which prior to the building of this community did not permit concrete slabs. Given the urgent need for housing in the region, the Town agreed. Levitt and Sons also controversially utilized non-union contractors in the project.

The planned 2,000 home rental community was quickly successful, with New York Herald Tribune reporting that half of the properties had been rented within two days of the community being announced on May 7, 1947. As demand continued, exceeding availability, the Levitts expanded their project with 4,000 more homes as well as community services, including schools and postal delivery.

In 1949, Levitt and Sons changed focus, unveiling a new plan which it termed a "ranch" house. Larger, by , and more modern, these homes were not intended for rental, but sale, with a planned price of $7,990. The ranch homes were similar to the rental properties in that they were built on concrete slabs, included an expandable attic but no garage, and were heated with hot-water radiant heating pipes. Five models were offered that were substantially identical with differences in details such as exterior color and window-placement. Again, demand was high, requiring that the purchasing process be streamlined as the assembly process had been, reaching the point that a buyer could walk through the process of selecting a house through contracting for its purchase in three minutes. This ranch model was altered in 1950 to include a carport and a built-in television. In 1951, a partially finished attic was added to the design.

Levittown proved successful. By 1951, it and surrounding regions included 17,447 homes constructed by Levitt and Sons.

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