Levittown

by David Kushner

  Books such as The Lonely Crowd and The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit depicted the hollow lives of uniform suburban men. “The typical postwar development operator was a man who figured how many houses he could possibly cram onto a piece of land and have the local zoning board hold still for it,” read a typical line from John Keats’s novelistic critique, The Crack in the Picture Window.

  Women began complaining about feelings of isolation, lamenting how the independence they had experienced during the war years been traded for a life of appliances. They were, as one writer put it, “feminine . . . ghettos in which husbands and fathers were reduced to harried visitors who turned over their paychecks to becurled, complaining, coffee-klatching wives and materialistic whining children, whereas wives and mothers were reduced to neurotic, child-driven chauffeurs and the generic term for this social milieu had become ‘Levittown.’ ”

  Critic Lewis Mumford was especially derisive of Levittown. “It is a one-class community on a great scale, too congested for effective variety and too spread out for social relationships . . . Mechanically, it is admirably done. Socially, the design is backward.” Levitt, he argued, used “new-fashioned methods to compound old-fashioned mistakes. It’s a suburb, and suburbs are just an expansion of mistaken policy to build without industry. We have to build complete, well-integrated ‘new towns,’ not monotonous suburbs with great picture windows that look out onto clotheslines.”

  With his huge but vulnerable ego, Bill Levitt shot back at such criticisms: “What would you call the places our homeowners left to move out here? We give them something better.” He had as much to say to his brother, Alfred, whenever Alfred brought up the criticisms of their town. “We’re not selling to Mumford,” Bill would snap.

  When a local paper in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, brought up the exclusion of blacks in his latest town, Levitt shot back again: “The plain fact is that most whites prefer not to live in mixed communities. This attitude may be wrong morally, and someday it may change. I hope it will. But as matters now stand, it is unfair to charge an individual for creating this attitude or saddle him with the sole responsibility for correcting it. The responsibility is society’s. So far society has not been willing to cope with it. Until it does, it is not reasonable to expect that any one builder should or could undertake to absorb the entire risk and burden of conducting such a vast social experiment.”

  Despite the controversies and criticisms, nothing could get Bill Levitt down. In fact, Levittown’s front man only became more famous—and beloved—with every passing day. With his dapper clothes, plucky sound bites, and Barnumesque panache, Levitt made great copy. He was an underdog turned hero, a metahero, in a sense, the man who’d saved the veterans after they’d saved America. The press portrayed Levitt as the swashbuckling, if not eccentric, superstar.

  “Strangely enough, the biggest house builder in the U.S. has built no house for himself,” marveled Time. “In winter he lives with his pretty wife Rhoda and their two sons . . . in a twelve-room Fifth Avenue apartment, which he rents for $4,900 a year. Summers they spend at Great Neck, L.I., in an English Tudor mansion (which Levitt rents for $7,500 a season) which has both a swimming pool and a private bathing beach on Long Island Sound. On summer weekends Bill sometimes plays golf (low 90s) with wife Rhoda (low 80s) but is not disturbed by his constant defeats. Says he: ‘I hate all forms of exercise.’ ”

  However, as Bill took on critics and pumped up his own image, it exacted a cost: He alienated himself from his brother, Alfred. The press had begun to pick up on the disparities between the two boys. While Bill cruised the muddy streets in his Cadillac, Alfred drove a Ford. Bill would be described dressed in “royal blue sports coat, light slacks and fawn-colored oxfords,” while one writer noted that Alfred “didn’t give a whoop” how he appeared. While Bill was on the cover of Time, Alfred’s mug could only be seen in engineering-magazine ads shilling nails. “ ‘ES-nails really work,’ Alfred S. Levitt says,” read one ad. “ ‘Now we can use gypsum or insulation for sheathing purposes instead of boarding.’ ”

  With Bill hogging the spotlight, Alfred found his own ideas increasingly overshadowed. He lamented how, despite fighting “tooth and nail” against the inclusion of ugly carports in his homes, he gave in to his brother’s desires. Alfred was still stinging from the cancellation of his own dream project, called Landia. Compared to Levittown, Landia would be tiny. The 675-acre Jericho, Long Island, residential development was to embody all his community ideas: parks, a town center, a train station, and shopping mall. The Levitts bought the land in 1951, but the project stalled when a freeze in building hit during the Korean War.

  Though Alfred incorporated some of the ideas into Levittown, Pennsylvania, there was no doubt about who was taking—and seeking—the credit: his big brother. If either brother would be remembered for Levittown, it would be Bill. Part of this was by design. Bill had the right skills and personality to run the show, and when they divvied up the shares, Alfred agreed to give him the reins. Bill owned 50 percent of Levitt & Sons, while Alfred had 49 percent, and Abe, the last 1 percent. And there was no question who was boss.

  To make matters more difficult, their aging father had pulled himself out of the company’s day-to-day operations to ease into retirement. That meant Alfred was now left to defend himself against Bill. And he had other matters weighing on him too: a divorce. In 1953, he left his wife, Sylvia, for a nineteen-year-old model he met in Paris. Though he was financially solvent, he faced having to pay a high enough sum to Sylvia that he needed more cash.

  So he considered his options and made his decision: he would sell his shares in the company to Bill. He had other projects he wanted to build, new dreams to pursue. In 1954, he left Levitt & Sons for good. From now on, any battle in Levittown would be his brother’s to fight alone.

  Eight

  AN EXTRA BEDROOM AND A GARAGE

  ONE DAY IN the spring of 1957, Daisy Myers rushed across her living room to her husband, Bill. What’s so urgent? he wanted to know. She took his hand and placed it gently on her round belly. He tried to speak again, but Daisy shushed him as he felt a kick from the baby inside. To their delight, the Myers family was growing. And that meant one thing: They needed more house.

  At their home in Bloomsdale Gardens, sons William III, four, and Stephen, three, were already sharing a room. With their next child due in July, Daisy and Bill wanted a three-bedroom home—particularly if they had a little girl, who would need her own space. But, on their modest salaries their options were limited. Then a friend suggested they look in the one neighborhood they hadn’t even considered, Levittown.

  The idea surfaced one night during a social gathering held at one of the Levittown homes. This was not the first time the Myerses had ventured across the road from Bloomsdale Gardens into Levittown. Daisy had been shopping in the town’s Shop-O-Rama stores since they’d moved into the area and never thought twice about it. She had also been taking classes at Temple University in Philadelphia, and some of the women in her car pool lived in Levittown.

  Daisy had become active in local affairs. As the recreation supervisor for the Bloomsdale Gardens school board, she was in charge of a local playground where black and white children from both communities played. She went door-to-door in Levittown collecting money for charities, including the Red Cross and the Levittown Library. Just as her parents had been active in local politics in Richmond, Daisy joined the Levittown League of Women Voters, often attending local discussion groups, sponsored by the William Penn Center, such as this one tonight.

  Topics ranged from local politics to community affairs, and despite being the only black members of the group, the Myerses felt welcomed. What they didn’t know was that some in the crowd were hatching a plan. Over coffee and cookies after the discussion, a member of the group approached Bill and said, “Do you know a nice Negro couple that would like to move to Levittown?”

  Bill, well aware of Levittown’s whites-only policy, was taken aback.
It hadn’t, after all, been long since the NAACP had lost its lawsuit to integrate the town. Despite his family’s involvement in the town, Bill couldn’t imagine a black family moving in. He and Daisy were passionate about their causes, but Bill had no desire to cast themselves as protagonists in a civil rights battle. He’d seen news reports of lynchings and shootings down South. He’d watched the violence that had erupted over the Montgomery bus boycott that followed in 1955 after Rosa Parks had refused to give up her seat. The last thing he wanted was to put his wife and children at risk. “No,” Bill told the man, “I don’t know any Negroes who would want to buy a home in Levittown.”

  When he told Daisy the story on the drive home to Bloomsdale, however, she surprised him by saying, “How about us?” She was only half-kidding. Her motivation wasn’t political, it was personal. The baby was coming. They needed a bigger home. They had failed to find an adequate house in surrounding areas and were now facing the prospect of moving back to a crowded apartment in a rough neighborhood of Philadelphia. If moving into Levittown meant getting a good house in a good school system, then maybe that alone was worth exploring the idea for real.

  During the next meeting of the discussion group, Bill approached the man who had posed the question from before. “Suppose we wanted to move?” Bill said.

  A special meeting was called by members of the discussion group to explore the matter further. Daisy thought it should be called the “Levittown Committee to Discuss the Successful Move-in of a Negro Family.” To Bill and Daisy’s dismay, however, the discussion seemed to become an interrogation. They were questioned for hours about their background and intentions. Daisy began to feel that these people were more interested in the idea of transforming Levittown than in the reality of the family’s desires and situation.

  “We’re just ordinary people,” she said, “we never cause a stir or get into trouble.” They just wanted what any family would: an affordable home in a nice community where they could live their lives. They weren’t looking for a fight. The group shared their concerns. Tensions had been building in Levittown. On the heels of the discussions, yellow pamphlets had appeared in favor of exclusion with forged names of Jewish families—a ploy, some believed, to stoke the fires of anti-Semitism and keep the activists at bay. Levittown seemed like a peaceful suburb of backyard barbecues and baseball games, but none knew what their neighbors were capable of doing if an African-American family actually moved in.

  Over three more meetings, the group met to talk in greater depth with the Myerses about the possibility of their moving into town. Because Levittown sprawled over four municipalities, some suggested that the problem would be particular to the neighborhood in which the Myerses might buy a house. What if, someone suggested, they simply went door-to-door to poll residents on how they felt about having a black family as neighbors? Then, with this information, they could decide how to proceed.

  Daisy recoiled. “Negroes have too long been expected to ask for permission for what they deserve,” she said. Plus what was the point of tipping off racists, who could then have time to organize their resistance? If the Myerses were going to move in, then they should just move in. No questions asked.

  All they needed was the right house. With a garage, Bill said.

  Forty-three Deepgreen Lane, the house next door to the Wechslers’, was empty. Their neighbor Irv Mandel had suffered a heart attack in 1955. Unable to work in his family’s drapery business, Mandel and his wife had moved in with her family in Philadelphia and put their home on the market. The small ranch Levittowner like the Wechslers’ had three bedrooms and was painted a cheery shade of pink. The carport had been converted into a garage.

  The house had been on the market for close to two years. A recession had hit Bucks County and the market for homes had stalled. With Levittown now housing over sixty thousand people, demand had largely been met. Unhealthy and unemployed, Mandel was desperate. One afternoon in the spring of 1957, he knocked on the Wechslers’ door. Lew had never seen his neighbor looking so forlorn. Mandel needed to unload the house before he went broke. Despite all his and his Realtor’s efforts, there had been no progress. They needed to show the home to more people. Just imagine all the black families out there who would love a home like this one, Mandel told Lew, if only they could get in. He hesitated. “Do you have any objections if I let a Negro Realtor show the home? If you do object, I won’t offer the house to them.”

  Bea and Lew knew exactly what Mandel was suggesting: selling his house to an African-American family. If a black family moved in next door, it would almost certainly impact them—in ways no one could predict. But they had an additional concern—and secret. With red-baiting still alive and well in America, they had no idea what would happen if their Communist past came out. If this happened in consort with an integration battle, well, there was no telling what might happen. However, they had never backed down from a fight, and the opportunity to integrate the most iconic suburb in America was too great to resist.

  “Would you meet with other couples to see if they could find a black family to move in?” Mandel asked. The Wechslers agreed. But they had no idea if they could find a family strong enough to take such a personal risk.

  A few nights later, they met in a Levittown home with a small group of couples they had known from the Human Relations Council and the Friends Service Association. It was genial crowd, and hot coffee and cookies were on the table. Chief among the people gathered was Snipes, the Quaker attorney. Then the Wechslers met the only black couple in the room, a tall, handsome man with a pencil-thin mustache, Bill Myers, and his pregnant wife, Daisy.

  The Wechslers and others listened attentively as the Myerses explained their housing predicament and the style of home they were seeking. Daisy, who’d grown up in a three-story house, longed for a ranch home so that the family could be on one floor. Bill expressed his desire for an enclosed garage that he could use as a workshop. As Lew heard them speak, he almost jumped from his seat. The Myerses were describing Mandel’s home to a T. “The house next door to us is on the market,” Lew said, “and the owner would sell to a Negro family.”

  On a subsequent afternoon in April 1957, Bill and Daisy drove a mile from their house in Bloomsdale Gardens to meet Lew at his home on Deepgreen Lane. When they followed him over to the little pink house next door, they couldn’t believe their eyes. It had everything they needed and more. There were three bedrooms, central air-conditioning, even a new washing machine and dryer. The kids had plenty of space to run around on the lawn; and Bill and Daisy had room to garden and barbecue.

  Daisy fell in love with its being a ranch, and that everything was on one convenient floor—no hiking up and down the steps with her kids anymore. With his heart pounding, Bill headed giddily past the kitchen and threw open the door to see his lifelong fantasy come true: a garage. It felt meant to be. The house was even just around the corner from a street named Daisy Lane. And at $12,150 it was the right price; the Mandels would make just $150 on the price they had paid in 1953, but they were ready to make a deal. As a veteran, Bill would be eligible for a GI Bill loan, and the Myerses would just have to come up with a $2,000 down payment.

  As badly as they wanted the house, Bill and Daisy went back to their home in Bloomsdale Gardens to weigh the pros and cons. They were well aware of the gravity of their decision. While they always had, as Daisy put it, “a faith that ‘right’ would triumph,” they considered the potential consequences. Every night after the boys were asleep, they would sit on the edge of the bed and ask themselves, “How much can we take? How much can the children take?”

  They weren’t just putting themselves into the fray, after all, they were including their children too. As young parents they had to face the most awful possibility of outcomes. “Would we be able to live in the home once we bought it?” Daisy wondered. “To what extent would our neighbors object? Would the developer, by some maneuvering, try to get us out? Could we live a normal, happy life in Levittown?
Could we protect our children?”

  At times like this, Bill fell silent. He was, as Daisy put it, a “deep thinker.” “Well,” he said, “I don’t know if it would be worth it.” They were both well aware of the potential price with the civil rights struggle brewing around the country. At the same time, they felt the support of friends and neighbors and had read letters and editorials in local papers discussing the need for integration. Maybe we are crossing too many bridges before we get to them, they concluded.

  The next day they picked up the phone and called the Wechslers with their decision.

  Lew looked out his window one morning to see his Levittown carpooler, George Frazier, waiting in his car out front to drive them to work. As Lew stepped outside to greet him, Frazier, as usual, good-naturedly teased Lew about his unkempt lawn. Frazier pointed at Lew’s patches of weeds and brush, then motioned to his own immaculate green swath. “You really got to do something about that lawn, Lew,” he said, as Lew smiled and nodded his head. But Lew had other things on his mind.

  Since getting the word from the Myerses that they wanted to buy the house next door, Bea and Lew had spent the early summer quietly helping them prepare for the move. Everyone agreed to respect Daisy’s desire to keep the move quiet. Lew only told one person, his neighbor Barney Bell, the Texan truck driver, of the plan. Bell was supportive and reassuring. “What can happen?” Bell said. “We live north of the Mason-Dixon Line.”

  The Myerses were anxious to get into the house in time for their oldest boy, William, to go to school in September. Lew accompanied Bill to various banks in an effort to secure a loan for the $2,000 down payment. But they had difficulty obtaining one. Bill was even turned down at a black-owned bank in Philadelphia. Through the grapevine, however, Bea and Lew heard of a wealthy philanthropist in New York City who might be of help.