Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Levittown




Starts an article in Life Magazine in August 1948: “William J. Levitt, 41, of Manhasset, Long Island has built 4,000 houses in the last 12 months, more than anyone else in the U.S.”

His company, Levitt & Sons, Inc., transformed the way in which American houses were built. After the Second World War, the United States was confronted with a huge housing shortage because of the returning soldiers who wanted to start a family and needed a home to do that. This shortage required the mass production of cheap houses. Levitt’s secret to do this was to turn the construction of a house into a systematic process: an assembly line. In itself, assembly lines and mass production are typical aspects of modern American culture. Furthermore, mass production results in mass consumption: another typically American trait.

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