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March 21, 2016
Levittown's Instant House
The walls were pale green. The floors were black asphalt tile. (Does your grandparent’s house have a finished basement? Look down. Yeah, that stuff.) The kitchen was pink. The bathrooms were fully tiled (not ceramic, though). The kitchen was fully equipped with brand-new General Electric appliances. In the current Home-Depot era, it’s unfathomable to think that people could not choose their wall colors, floor coverings or kitchen cabinets. Back then, however, the thinking was “You’re not going to get a better deal on a brand-new house. If you don’t like it, change it in the future.” Most people agreed, because the houses sold quicker than Bill Levitt could put them up—at a rate of about 30 houses a day. Instant House: Levittown, PA
Posted by gerardvanderleun at March 21, 2016 5:16 PM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.
Your Say
The WW2 vets I went to school with, lived among, and flew with (I was a couple years too young to be one) weren't all that hung up on niceties. It rubbed off on me.
Posted by: BillH ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://americandigest.org/sidelines/nav-commenters.gif)
at March 21, 2016 2:33 PM
I remember visiting some people in Levittown as a kid, down from Vermont. the lasting image is a lot of houses and not a goddamn tree in sight. It was summer and flat out hot.
Posted by: Vermont Woodchuck at March 21, 2016 4:15 PM
If you want to see Levittown on steroids take a look at Cape Coral, FL. Bazillions of houses that look mostly the same and hardly a tree in sight. At the height of the build-up, 2002-2006, First Homes was dropping 5,000 houses a year on the ground, many of them with chinese drywall.
A decent 10 year old oak tree will cost you $10,000 in Cape Coral. We now have 100,000 of them on our property. Wealth is in the eye of the beholder.
Posted by: ghostsniper at March 21, 2016 6:46 PM
Wealth is in the eye of the b̶e̶h̶o̶l̶d̶e̶r̶ forester.
ghost - FTFY
Posted by: BillH at March 22, 2016 7:36 AM