Perfect Communities

The rise and fall of William J. Levitt, the man who made the suburban house a mass commodity
 
Two material artifacts defined the middle-class American lifestyle in the mid-twentieth century: the automobile, which brought with it gas stations, highways, commercial strips, and sprawl; and the single-family suburban home, the repository of many families’ long-term wealth and the place where people hope to live out the American Dream. But while the man who did the most to make the automobile a mass commodity—Henry Ford—is well known, few know the story of the man who did the same for the mass-produced suburban house.
 
This book describes the remarkable career of William Levitt, who did more than anyone else to create the modern suburb. In the years following World War II, his Levittown developments provided abundant, cheap, mass-produced housing (he sometimes finished thirty in a day) for veterans and their families who desperately needed places to live. He was a life-changing hero to tens of thousands of people, and a national celebrity in an era when business celebrities were rare. But Levitt also shared Ford’s dark side. He refused to allow Black people to buy or rent homes in his developments, doggedly defended this practice against legal challenges, and, emulated by hundreds of later developers, ensured that suburbs nationwide would be—and remain—white enclaves. Historian Edward Berenson tells the story of a key architect of the postwar American lifestyle, his meteoric rise and tragic fall, and the complicated legacy that endures to this day.