Levittown

by David Kushner

  Levitt remained on as president of the company for about six months, however, and had one last unexpected order of business before he left for good. It began on April 4, 1968, when Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Six days later, a small story four of the Wall Street Journal bore the headline, LEVITT & SONS STARTS ‘OPEN HOUSING’ POLICY AS KING ‘MEMORIAL.’ The Journal reported that the proposal had been “drawn up by the Levitt management and approved by ITT,” though failed to specify whether it had originated with Bill Levitt himself. Nevertheless, the announcement was viewed as a stunning admission of his past racist policies and the mark of sweeping changes to come. “Open housing was one of Dr. King’s greatest hopes,” said Levitt, “our action is a memorial to him.”

  African-Americans were already living in his three Levittown communities, but Levitt & Sons now had eighteen communities being constructed around the world, from Illinois to France, and the new policy would ensure open housing in each. “It is high time that we take this stand,” Levitt said.

  The company took out a full-page advertisement in cities including Washington, D.C., New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Chicago to announce the plan as well. At the top of the ad was a large picture of Martin Luther King. Underneath the photo was the headline LEVITT PAYS TRIBUTE TO DR. KING IN DEED—NOT EMPTY PHRASES. The ad continued, “This Company has adopted a new policy—effective at once—eliminating segregation any place it builds . . . We ask all our colleagues to adopt a similar policy without delay. The forces of bigotry and prejudice must not be permitted to prevail any longer, and we urge all builders—large and small alike—to do their part in making America once again the ideal of the world.”

  But the damage to Levitt’s name had been done. While some revered Levitt to the end, a backlash had begun. “Little Boxes,” a song by folksinger Malvina Reynolds, indelibly branded the landscape of identical “ticky-tacky houses.” In New Jersey, residents voted to change the name of their community back to Willingboro. Some said it was due to confusion over the mail’s getting sent to the Levittown in Pennsylvania. When homeowners of Levittown, Pennsylvania, pushed, unsuccessfully, for a similar measure, one resident said what was on a lot of residents’ minds: “Levittown is a dirty word.”

  But Levitt had found a distraction: a young, ravishing French art dealer named Simone Korchin. After leaving his first wife, Rhoda, Levitt divorced his second wife and former secretary, Alice, in 1969 to marry Korchin on November 19, 1969, and the two began living a life of decadent luxury. They celebrated their wedding anniversary monthly instead of yearly, and Levitt lavished Simone with gifts of diamonds, rubies, and gold.

  They lived together in a twenty-six-room mansion called La Colline on sixty-eight acres in Mills Neck, Long Island, with their Rolls-Royce parked outside. The estate had an indoor tennis court, an elevator, and a staff of servants and maids. The Levitts raised red devon cattle and Bill bought a 237-foot yacht called La Belle Simone, for his wife, and transformed it into a hot spot for international jet-setters. Bill would stay up late into the night playing songs on the piano, drinking his favorite, Rob Roys.

  But despite his fairy-tale lifestyle, his business was in trouble. Never a saver, he had borrowed against his ITT stock—only to lose 90 percent of the value when the company’s stock tanked. To make matters worse, Levitt had to abide by a noncompete clause that prevented him from building in the United States. His attempts to build abroad in countries such as Nigeria and Venezuela went nowhere. He lost twenty million dollars trying to build a community in Iran. In 1978, with his noncompete clause expired, Levitt set his sights on a comeback: He would build a ten-thousand-home community in Florida aimed at the generation of Levittowners in New York and Pennsylvania who were getting ready to retire. He wanted to call it Levittown, but ITT, which had bought his name, refused to let him. He called it Williamsburg, after himself, instead.

  That deal and two others in Florida fell apart—leaving the buyers, the contractors, and the builder in dire straits. Levitt had been using money from the homeowners’ deposits to pay his mounting bills, yet no cash was coming in. People who had put their life savings into the deposits found themselves standing in empty fields of incomplete homes. “I lived in a Levitt house on Long Island for thirty years—just his name was like magic to us,” said one jilted buyer, “[but] it’s like a ghost town here. Levitt has been a tremendous disappointment to us.” Another put it more bluntly: “I feel like I’ve been mugged.”

  Levitt, though, refused to change his extravagant ways. “His ego made him succeed,” Simone Levitt said, “and his ego broke him because he could have stopped spending.” To cover costs, Levitt illegally took eleven million dollars from his family’s charitable foundation. After an investigation by the New York State attorney general’s office, Levitt was forced in 1987 to pay back the money he had taken. Simone Levitt didn’t know there was a problem until one day the people from Christie’s came to take her husband’s original Renoir and Monet paintings from the walls. She recalls seeing Bill sitting numbly at his desk as his favorite objects were being repossessed. “He was on Valium, he was like a zombie,” she said, “he couldn’t believe this was happening to him.” The electricity got shut off, along with the phone. They had to sell the house, and the boat. When they were down to nothing but the last ring Bill had given Simone—a twenty-seven-carat diamond—Bill wanted to sell it too. “I promise I can make it into eight times its value,” he told his wife.

  “I’d rather swallow it,” Simone replied, and kept it (she would sell it years after her husband’s death to rebuild her life).

  In his darkest hours, Levitt found new meaning in the legend he had created. One day in 1987, he returned to Levittown, New York, upon an invitation to celebrate the community’s fortieth anniversary. As he rode along in the parade, he looked out upon the sea of people rushing up to greet him. As a child, his father used to read him stories about Captain Kidd sailing the high seas for adventure. Bill had grown to build and live his fantasy, traveling the world on his yacht. But, in the end, this life had left him dry. As he looked out upon the Levittowners, he began to cry. “The people of Levittown are much more my friends than the people of Park Avenue,” he said he realized. “Oh, God, yes, more than most of those I entertained on my yacht.”

  When reality set in, Levitt was destitute. Unable to pay his debts, he pleaded with a judge for mercy. “I haven’t bought a pair of shoes in ten years,” he said. Before long, he ended up in North Shore University Hospital with his kidneys failing. Though he couldn’t afford care, he was given a room because in his heyday he had donated millions to the hospital. In the fall of 1993, a sociologist from Hunter University filmed an interview with the once great titan. Though weak and raspy, Levitt still exuded the unbridled mix of optimism and denial for which he was famous. “I have a regular organization ready to punch in full-time,” he said. “I need another six months.” Three months later on January 28, 1994, eighty-six-year-old William Jaird Levitt was dead.

  Levitt left behind a complex legacy—the man who both provided the American Dream to a generation of veterans and denied it to an entire race. As planned communities of seemingly identical homes spread across America, his legacy would continue to be debated for decades to come.

  Some preferred to remember him for what he’d achieved. “What difference does it make if you die with a hundred million dollars in the bank or nothing in the bank if you had Bill Levitt’s life?” his friend Ralph Della Ratta told Newsday after Levitt’s death. “He had a huge estate, a huge yacht, three gorgeous wives, and was generous to boot. What the hell more do you want? It was the American Dream.”

  Others divided over what he’d left behind. “Levitt bears a lot of responsibility, enormous responsibility, in that he was the pacesetter,” said Rosalyn Baxandall, a professor at the State University of New York in Stonybrook. He and other builders “established a pattern of segregation that we still have” today. Others cautioned against
overstating his role. “To paint Levitt as a villain would be unfair,” said sociologist Herbert Gans. “The whole system was villainous. Levitt strictly reflected the times.” For historian Kenneth Jackson, Levitt missed the chance to be truly heroic: “Levittown was an opportunity tragically lost. There was such a demand for houses—they had people waiting on lines—that even if they had said there will be some blacks living there, white people would still have moved in.”

  On June 13, 2007, the National Association of Home Builders enshrined Levitt, “the Father of Suburbia,” as they called him, in their Hall of Fame. “The National Housing Hall of Fame recognizes individuals whose spirit, ingenuity, and determination have changed the face of housing history for the better,” said the president of the group. “Except for the man who invented nails, no one man has had a greater effect on home building in America than William J. Levitt.”

  For the Wechslers, the experience in Levittown left them with a complicated legacy of their own. In the wake of the injunction, their community tried to heal itself. A neighborhood group, the Dogwood Hollow Neighbors, was established to heal the wounds. “We are ashamed of the terrible incidents that took place in our neighborhood,” the group said in a statement. “We feel that they have seriously damaged the reputation of our community and of all Levittown. But we’re also convinced that they were not at all representative of the vast majority of Dogwood Hollow residents and Levittowners. The great majority of our neighbors are decent, responsible, law abiding, and fair minded. During the heat of events it was hard for anyone to speak out. Now, however, we believe it is time for all responsible law-abiding people to come forward and express the true sentiments of our community.”

  In 1958, the Wechslers saw a second African-American family move into Levittown. Concerned about another breakout of violence, the police parked a school bus near the home and filled it with officers. But the family moved in without event. African-Americans were now part of the town once and for all.

  But despite their victories, the Wechslers felt less and less welcomed. The chill of their experience lingered long after the court gavel fell. Friends and neighbors who had once stood by their side began to treat them like ghosts. Infighting within the liberal factions in town left them alienated. The “whispering campaign,” as Lew put it, surely related to their political past, took hold.

  Before long, the very groups that the Wechslers had rallied behind in their support of the Myerses left them behind, particularly the Human Relations Council. “They were delighted to keep us at the length of a very long arm,” Lew would later note. The Friends Service Association, however, stuck by the Wechslers and invited Lew to join the board of directors. During his time there, he helped start a multicultural community center serving African-Americans, Latinos, and Italians.

  Before long, Bea and Lew decided to leave Levittown for good. The two bought a home on the Jersey shore and moved there full-time in 1976. They spent their days tending to their house, and Lew would canoe into the bay for clams. But the events in Levittown always stayed in their hearts and minds. One day in 1991, Lew began jotting down his memories of that hot summer years before. It became his memoir, The First Stone, which his family self-published in 2004. Bea and Lew both continued to work until their late eighties. As of this writing in 2008, eighty-eight-year-old Bea and eighty-nine-year-old Lew are still there, alive and well.

  As they settled into a quieter life, their children continued working for causes their parents had introduced them to so long ago. Katy remained active in civil rights and graduated from Lew’s alma mater, Oberlin. Nick became a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. When asked by the court if he believed in a supreme being, he replied, “Yes, the people.” In his house in Chicago, Nick still has the ball that Jackie Robinson signed so proudly that day fifty years ago.

  For the Myerses, in the aftermath of Levittown they were civil rights icons. They were featured in news stories and on 60 Minutes; they attended honorary dinners and functions. But throughout it all they retained their quiet strength and humility. “It’s heartening to see so many people sincerely interested in this problem,” Bill Myers said. “Now we’re just another normal family living in another normal community.” Still, he said, it wasn’t perfect. People drove by the house to gawk at them and their now famous home. “Of course there are some that still won’t accept us,” he said. “On the other hand, there are some that we don’t find acceptable.”

  Though the leaders of the Levittown mob abided by the injunction, they were largely unrepentant. Howard Bentcliff spit on the sidewalk as Daisy Myers passed by one afternoon. The most brazen was James Newell, the Southerner who had been the group’s ringleader. Despite his notoriety, Newell ran for the position of Levittown committeeman. Before the election, he drove through the neighborhood promoting himself over a loudspeaker. When he passed the Myerses’ home, he saw Daisy in front and said, “I only did what people wanted me to do.” Newell lost the election and faded out of sight.

  Though the Myerses were now able to live in the town without harassment, Daisy and Bill often felt on edge. One day, Daisy went with a friend to shop for a washing machine. When the salesman learned her name, however, he quickly excused himself to the back. “Well, here it comes,” Daisy whispered to her friend, assuming there would be some retribution. Instead, the salesman returned with his colleagues, who were proud to shake her hand for taking such a courageous stand. Daisy went home that night and resolved to look at life in a new way. “Bigots are a small minority,” she wrote in her journal, “and the American people, for the most part, are kind and tolerant at heart.”

  But the Myerses wouldn’t stay in Levittown for long. In June 1961, with a fourth child, Barry, now in tow, the family left Levittown for good. Bill had gotten a job as a superintendent in Harrisburg, and Daisy had decided to commute to York to teach sixth grade. The following year, they moved back to York. They enjoyed their lives back in their old town. Bill, always the fix-it man, took out his tools again and built a basketball hoop that all the local kids used for play.

  Now and then, Daisy found herself having to fight again. Her daughter, Lynda, had become an honor student and earned a spot in an exchange program to Austria. Before she was to leave, however, the administrators called a meeting with her parents. They explained that they had never sent a black student before and worried that it wouldn’t work out well if they did. They didn’t know whom they were dealing with. “Well, if you don’t send her,” Daisy told them firmly, “you’ll hear from me.” The school complied.

  Lynda Myers would go on to become a teacher, her brother Stephen, a police officer, and her brother William, the owner of a courier service. Daisy, who would complete two master’s degrees in education, soon became a principal of a local elementary school, where she remained until her retirement in 1979. But after a lifetime of social and political activity, Daisy couldn’t stay on the sidelines for long and went back to work for another two decades as a congressional assistant. In 1987, however, tragedy struck. Bill died of lung cancer. Daisy always kept him close to her heart. From the day they’d met in Virginia, he remained the love of her life.

  Over the years, Daisy would often recall her experiences in Levittown, and one day, she decided to revisit them again. During the crisis of 1957, Daisy would steal time away to chronicle the events in her diary. But those pages would end up collecting dust in a box in her attic for decades. Not until 1999, with the encouragement of a local writers’ group she had joined upon her retirement, did she dig up the pages again. Her friends were so moved by her recollections that they helped arrange for the local York County Heritage Trust to publish Daisy’s journal, which she titled, Sticks ’n Stones.

  As Daisy read over the words she had written so long ago, the scenes came rushing back. When she was through reading, she picked up a pen and added one last thought: “When I think back over all of this—what happened in Levittown—I wonder how we made it through those days, [but] . . .
what happened to me and to my family prepared us for who we are now—stronger human beings. The Myers family has not only survived but thrived while seeking a part of the American dream: to have a comfortable home. No one should ever be punished for that.”

  Later that year, the new generation of Levittowners wanted to show her how much they agreed. On December 7, 1999, more than forty years after her ordeal, seventy-four-year-old Daisy Myers returned for a special tribute in Levittown. As she arrived, she could plainly see that despite Levitt’s fears blacks never did cause the white buyers in Levittown, Pennsylvania, to leave. If anything, the notoriety of the Myerses’ experience kept other African-American families away.

  According to a recent census, blacks represent only 2.45 percent of Levittown, Pennsylvania’s residents. Of course, this isn’t the only such suburb in the twenty-first century; millions of Americans still look outside their homes to see neighbors of the same race. After a 2000 census identified Levittown, New York, as being 94.1 percent Caucasian, the New York Times declared Long Island “the most racially segregated suburban region in the country.”

  In Levittown, Pennsylvania, the overwhelmingly white Levittowners had plenty of problems of their own. Levittown had become a haven for the home-brewed drug crystal methamphetamine. A Levittown-based biker gang running the largest crystal-meth operation in the area was busted. Nazi paraphernalia was found at one of the homes. Soon after, the Levittown high school valedictorian spent his graduation under police lockdown after a member of the Bloods gang threatened to kill him. The New York Times wrote, “Simple American rites of passage were not supposed to be this jarring in Levittown, a community that was designed in the early 1950’s as an affordable refuge for returning World War II veterans eager to seek serenity in the suburbs.”