Levittown

by David Kushner

  But on this cold, wintry night, the people of Levittown had come to pay respects to a woman who had taken a stand here so long ago. As holiday lights twinkled in the streets, Daisy was escorted to where a crowd of hundreds had gathered around a sixteen-foot blue-spruce tree. The tree was being dedicated to her, and everything she had done. A plaque at the base bore her name, MISS DAISY.

  “Tonight we want to welcome back a hero,” the Bristol Township mayor told the crowd. “A hero is a person admired for qualities and deeds, and tonight a true hero stands in front of you—Mrs. Daisy Myers—a person of distinguished bravery, the principal figure in a story. She endured the worst kind of humiliation—racism. For that we are truly sorry.”

  As the crowd applauded Daisy, her emotions mixed. Though she appreciated the apology, she couldn’t help but wonder where these people were when she’d really needed them most that summer so long ago. More than anything, she longed for her husband, Bill, to be here sharing this moment with her. “The tree will serve as a reminder that what happened in the past cannot be tolerated or accepted,” the mayor continued. “What is happening here tonight is the welcome she should have received long ago.”

  On cue, Daisy flipped a switch and the lights on the tree came to life. Out in the crowd, the young families watched the display. Daisy would return to York, where she lives to this day. But this night would long be remembered. Whenever children in the future would ask for whom the tree was named, their parents would tell them the tale. There are stories that are true, and stories we want to believe. This, they’d say, is the story of Levittown.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This is a true story, and like any true story, it’s indebted to the people who have told pieces of it before. I’m grateful to Bea and Lew Wechsler for sharing their memories and archives. Lew wrote and self-published a wonderful memoir of Levittown called The First Stone, and I urge anyone who wants a firsthand account of the events of the summer of 1957 to read it.

  Daisy Myers shared her recollections with me over many long conversations at her home in York. In August 1957, Daisy began keeping a remarkable journal of her experiences in Levittown, which, even more remarkably, spent decades afterward in her attic. I was fortunate to read an early draft of the manuscript, which was finally published in 2005 as Sticks ’n Stones. It should be required reading for anyone interested in the story of Levittown. Thanks, Daisy, for all your help.

  I’m also grateful to the surviving members of the Levitt family who spoke with me: Bill Levitt’s widow, Simone; his sons, William Jr. and James; as well as his stepdaughters, Gaby Altman and Nicole Bernstein. Alfred Levitt’s son, Jon, was a wonderful resource for stories of his family too. Thanks to the many others who took time to talk with me. I’m also indebted to the librarians and archivists at the public libraries in Levittown, Pennsylvania, and Levittown, New York, as well as the Temple University Urban Archives in Philadelphia. Thanks to Dr. Ray Arsenault, John Hope Franklin Professor of Southern History at the University of South Florida, for reading and commenting on the book.

  Big thanks to my editor, Kathy Belden, who connected with this story from the start and nurtured it to completion; my publisher, George Gibson of Walker & Company; my literary agent, Mary Ann Naples of the Creative Culture; my film/TV agent, Judi Farkas of Judi Farkas Management; and all the magazine editors I work with throughout the year.

  Writing a book is a strange sort of disappearing act, especially since I don’t let anyone read anything until I’m finished with my first draft. For that reason, it’s all the more crucial to get support from family and friends as I’m deep into my work. So here’s to Dad, Mom, Andy, Shelley, Alyssa, Howard, Harriett, Joanne, Sue, Sami, Mia, and everyone else who rooted me on.

  NOTES

  Note: Some of the page numbers and publication titles were not listed on the archived materials. In addition to the following resources, my recreation of events in this book was culled from my own interviews with people, including Lew Wechsler, Bea Wechsler, Katy Wechsler, Nick Wechsler, Daisy Myers, William Myers III, Simone Levitt, William Levitt Jr., James Levitt, Jon Levitt, Gaby Altman, Nicole Bernstein, David Virgil Randall, Governor George Leader, Dave Matza, Samuel Snipes, Charles Biederman, Harriet and Paul Pushinsky, Roy Sheldon, Howard Kasman, Hal Lefcourt, Ralph Della Ratta, Ed Cortese, Diane Walker, and Bud Rubin.

  Prologue

  xii “Our property seems”: Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Subur-banization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 12.

  Chapter One

  2 “The way to be happy”: “Abraham Levitt Is Dead at 82; Developer of Three Levittowns; Lawyer Founded Firm That Built 60,000 Homes in East—Active in Philanthropies,” New York Times, August 21, 1962, p. 33.

  2 washing dishes at restaurants and selling newspapers: Ibid.

  2 He started with magazines: Ibid.

  3 As a sophomore: Ibid; and author interview, Jon Levitt.

  3 As his family would later joke: Author interview, William Levitt Jr.

  4 “Self-confidence waxed”: Current Biography Yearbook 1956 (New York: HW Wilson, 1956), p. 373.

  4 Alfred, introspective: “Up from the Potato Fields,” Time, July 3, 1950, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,812779,00.html.

  4 They dueled: Author interview, Jon Levitt.

  4 At PS 44: “Dream Builder,” Newsday, September 18, 1997, http://www.newsday.com/community/guide/lihistory/ny-levittown-hslevpro,0,721552.story.

  4 In one photo: Author interview, William Levitt Jr.

  4 “Alfred is a genius”: “Dream Builder.”

  5 “Where’s your brother”: Ibid.

  5 At sixteen: Ibid.

  5 “I got itchy”: “Up from the Potato Fields.”

  5 Around that time: “William J. Levitt: Master Builder,” Horizons 18 (1976).

  5 The housing market: Nathaniel Schneider Keith, Politics and the Housing Crisis Since 1930 (New York: Universe Books, 1973), p. 17, as cited in Rosalyn Baxandall and Elizabeth Ewen, Picture Windows (New York: Basic Books, 2000), p. 32.

  5 With many losing money: Tom Bernard, “New Homes for $60 a Month,” American Magazine, April 1948, p. 104.

  5 “Bill wouldn’t be a success”: “Dream Builder.”

  6 Thomas Jefferson said: Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, p. 68.

  6 Llewellyn Park, New Jersey: Ibid., p. 78.

  6 Brooklyn bard: Ibid., p. 50.

  6 Frederick Law Olmstead: Ibid., p. 79.

  6 One scribe: Ted Steinberg, American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006), p. 12.

  7 And so that homeowners: Ibid.

  7 “The city is doomed”: Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburban-ization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press), p. 175.

  7 883,000 homes: Ibid.

  7 As the end of the decade: Baxandall and Ewen, Picture Windows, p. 30.

  7 New housing: Ibid., p. 32.

  8 As the head of: “William J. Levitt: Master Builder.”

  8 “Better come in”: Ibid.

  8 While the Depression loomed: “New Homes for $60 a Month,” p. 104.

  8 By 1934: Baxandall and Ewen, Picture Windows, p. 74.

  8 He would bring: Ibid., p. 75.

  8 Bill secured land: “Developers Defy Depression Years; Long Island Company Has Constructed and Sold 250 Dwellings Since 1929. New Group Under Way; Levitt & Sons Plan the Eventual Erection of 200 More Residences at Manhasset,” New York Times, October 28, 1934, p. RE1.

  8 “Alfred loves to draw”: Eugene Rachlis and John E. Marqusee, The Land Lords (New York: Random House, 1963), p. 232.

  8 He was the first: Author interview, William Levitt Jr.

  8 The idea for Manhasset: Baxandall and Ewen, Picture Windows, p. 75.

  9 No home would go: Ibid.

  9 The homes were built: Barbara M. Kelly, Expanding the American Dream: Building and Rebuilding Levittown (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1993), p. 37.

  9 It included a: “Manhasset Homes Have Novel Notes,” Washington Post, April 8, 1934, p. R3.

  9 Alfred said: “Levitt’s Progress,” Fortune, October 1952, p. 164.

  9 They called it: “New Features Seen in Manhasset Home,” New York Times, April 25, 1937, p. 190.

  9 They converted a: “Club to Be Part of the Home Colony,” New York Times, March 5, 1939, p RE1.

  10 Even doghouses: Baxandall and Ewen, Picture Windows, p. 76.

  11 The New York Times: “Developers Defy Depression Years,” p. RE1.

  11 Abe Levitt and his kids: Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, p. 234.

  11 Word spread: “Dream Builder.”

  11 “in the seventeenth century”: “The House That Levitt Built,” Esquire, December 1983, p. 5.

  Chapter Two

  16 While the U.S. Supreme Court: Rosalyn Baxandall and Elizabeth Ewen, Picture Windows (New York: Basic Books, 2000), p. 31.

  16 Banks refused: Becky M. Nicolaides and Andrew Wiese, The Suburb Reader (New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 225.

  16 Believing that blacks: Baxandall and Ewen, Picture Windows, p. 26.

  17 One Long Island march: Ibid., p. 30.

  17 The HOLC pumped: Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburban-ization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985). pp. 196–97.

  17 A community in St. Louis: Ibid., 200.

  17 Scholars and real-estate-textbook: Ibid., 198.

  17 “Inharmonious groups of people”: Nicolaides and Wiese, Suburb Reader, p. 237.

  18 Bankers and Realtors: Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, p. 203.

  18 With the Federal Housing Administration’s creation: James W. Loewen, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism (New York: The New Press, 2005), p. 129.

  18 “If a neighborhood is”: Federal Housing Administration, Underwriting Manual: Underwriting and Valuation Procedure Under Title II of the National Housing Act with Revisions to April 1, 1936 (Washington, D.C.), pt. 2, sec. 2, “Rating of Location.”

  18 “Natural or artificially”: Ibid.

  18 The next provision: Federal Housing Administration, Underwriting Manual: Underwriting and Valuation Procedure Under Title II of the National Housing Act with Revisions to February, 1938 (Washington, D.C.), pt. 2, sec. 9, “Rating of Location.”

  18 While the HOLC insured: Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, 207.

  18 “For perhaps the first”: Ibid., 213.

  18 “The national government”: Ibid., 217.

  21 She said it felt as if: Daisy D. Myers, Sticks ’n Stones: The Myers Family in Levittown (York, PA: York County Heritage Trust, 2005), p. 13.

  21 “If integration works here”: Ibid., p. 12.

  Chapter Three

  24 “Because, honey”: Interview, Bea and Lew Wechsler.

  25 Formed in 1931: Robert Cohen, “Student Activism in the 1930s,” http:// newdeal.feri.org/students/move.htm.

  25 One letter writer: “Our Red Menace,” New York Times, April 11, 1932, p. 14.

  26 “The creation of the deeply”: “Nation’s Students Strike for Peace; Disorders Are Few,” New York Times, April 13, 1935, p. 1.

  26 few high school students: Ibid.

  27 “It condemns the ‘southern system’ ”: “Students in a Union,” New York Times, January 5, 1936, p. X9.

  29 “Ownership of homes”: Barbara M. Kelly, Expanding the American Dream: Building and Rebuilding Levittown (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), p. 48.

  29 “A nation of homeowners”: Ibid., 49.

  29 At the New York World’s Fair: Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 187.

  29 Pop songs such as: Rosalyn Baxandall and Elizabeth Ewen, Picture Windows (New York: Basic Books, 2000), p. 22.

  29 Magazines such as: Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, p. 232.

  29 “All the fighting power”: Baxandall and Ewen, Picture Windows, p. 83.

  30 Nineteen forty-five would be: Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820–2000 (New York: Vintage Books, 2004), p. 131.

  30 Six million moved in: Ibid.

  30 “Most veterans said: “Homes in Barracks Attract Veterans; Applying for Homes in Former Military Installations,” New York Times, December 4, 1945, p. 21.

  30 A half million: Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, p. 232.

  30 One senator: Lomas Financial Corporation, p. 3, Levittown History Collection, Levittown Library, NY.

  30 But their so-called: Hayden, Building Suburbia, p. 130.

  30 It was “a deliberately created slum”: Baxandall and Ewen, Picture Windows, p. 91.

  31 “There are those who maintain”: Ibid., p. 93.

  31 Planes dropped flyers: Ibid., p. 94.

  31 Painters and bricklayers: Ibid., p. 98.

  Chapter Four

  35 “a big car”. “Up from the Potato Fields,” Time, July 3, 1950, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,812779,00.html.

  35 And for the young, self-taught builders: “Revolutionizing an Industry: William J. Levitt,” Lessons of Leadership: 21 Leaders Speak Out on Creating, Developing, and Managing Success (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968), p. 56.

  36 “It is part”: “They’ll Build Neighborhoods, Not Houses,” Saturday Evening Post, October 28, 1946, pp. 11, 43–46.

  36 Some in the company: “Up from the Potato Fields.”

  36 “That little branch”: Eugene Rachlis and John E. Marqusee The Land Lords (New York: Random House, 1963), p. 233.

  36 As the press later recounted: Current Biography Yearbook 1956 (New York: HW Wilson, 1956), p. 374.

  36 Levitt made sure: “Dream Builder,” Newsday, September 18, 1987, http://www.newsday.com/community/guide/lihistory/ny-levittown-hslevpro,0,721552.story.

  37 the demand, sixteen million: “The Six Thousand Houses That Levitt Built,” Harper’s, September 1948, p. 82.

  37 While sitting with companions: Lomas Financial Corporation, “The First 10 Years,” undated, p. 4, Levittown Public Library.

  37 As Alfred put it: “A Community Builder Looks at Community Planning,” Journal of the American Institute of Planners, Spring 1951, p. 88.

  37 They would, he said: Ibid., p. 80.

  38 “Access to a swimming pool”: Rosalyn Baxandall and Elizabeth Ewen, Picture Windows (New York: Basic Books, 2000), p. 131.

  38 “There will be no need”: “They’ll Build Neighborhoods,” pp. 11, 43–46.

  38 “Mrs. Kilroy Gets”: “Mrs. Kilroy Gets the Best,” New York Times, September 14, 1947, p. SM29.

  39 “Alfred [draws] on”: “The House That Levitt Built,” Newsday, August 15, 1997, http://www.newsday.com/community/guide/lihistory/ny-levittown-hslevhou,0,7148676.story?coll=ny-lihistory-navigation.

  39 “Teams of two or three”: “New Homes for $60 a Month,” American Magazine, April 1948, pp. 46–47, 104–7.

  40 “A small builder”: “Suburban Pioneers,” Newsday, September 28, 1997, p. H23.

  40 A photo spread: Newsday, May 28, 1947, p. 17.

  41 “I wanted the new name”: “Levitt Licks the Housing Shortage,” Coronet, September 1948, p. 112–16.

  41 “Milk wagons raced”: “1st Vets Move in at Island Trees,” Newsday, October 2, 1947, p. 2.

  42 “An Accomplishment”: “Six Thousand Houses That Levitt Built,” p. 79.

  42 Newsday, declared it: “Pride and Prejudice,” Newsday, no date/page, Levittown History Collection, Levittown Library, NY.

  42 “Cultivation, cultivation, cultivation!”: “Chats on Gardening,” Levittown Tribune, May 22, 1952, p. 6.

  43 “They ride roughshod”: “Chats on Gardening,” Levittown Tribune, June 12, 1952, p. 8.

  43 “The policy that has prevailed”: “Rental Policy to Remain Unchanged at Levittown,” Newsday, June 1, 1949.

  44 “It’s not me”: Llewellyn M. Smith, “The House We Live In,” Race: The Power of an
Illusion (San Francisco: California Newsreel, 2004), http://www.newsreel.org/transcripts/race3.htm.

  44 As she was led outside: “Say Negroes Got Levitt ‘No,’ ” Newsday, June 7, 1949.

  44 “Give me a chance”: “An Interview with Levitt,” Building the American Dream, documentary, 1993, transcript excerpt, http://www.uvm.edu/~jloewen/sundowntownsshow.php?id=272.

  44 “We can solve”: Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 241.

  44 “Despite the skeptics”: “Suburban Pioneers,” Newsday, September 28, 1997, http://www.newsday.com/community/guide/lihistory/ny_levittown_hslevone,0,7345274.story?coll=ny-lihistory-navigation.

  44 Despite Levitt’s claims: To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City, new ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), pp. 230–31.

  44 “Organizations which appear”: Newsday, editorial, March 12, 1949.

  45 One morning: John Thomas Liell, “Levittown: A Study in Community Planning and Development” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1952), p. 259.

  46 “We’ve waited”: “Home-Rush Mobs Levitt,” Newsday, May 12, 1949, p. 5.

  46 “In a scene”: Ibid.

  46 By November 1951: “Veteran Takes Title to Last L’town House,” Levittown Tribune, November 22, 1951.

  46 “I’m not going out on a limb”: “Growing Pains,” Newsday, http://www.newsday.com/community/guide/lihistory/ny-levittown-hslevtwo,0,2163353.story, accessed July 14, 2008.

  46 “Only in America”: “1951 Construction Last for This Area, Says Levitt Official,” Levittown Eagle, May 31, 1951, no page number, Levittown History Collection.

  47 “The success of a parent”: “All Levittown Honors Abraham Levitt,” Levittown Eagle, November 1, 1951, no page number, Levittown History Collection.

  47 “Nation’s Biggest Housebuilder”: “Nation’s Biggest Housebuilder,” Life, August 23, 1948, p. 75.

  Chapter Five

  49 “You shouldn’t feel bad”: Author interview, Daisy Myers.

  50 “Who are my neighbors?”: Daisy D. Myers, Sticks ’n Stones: The Myers Family in Levittown (York, PA: York County Heritage Trust, 2005), p. 17