Here's Levittown Pa., way back in the late 40s or early 50s. It was ground Zero for the postwar housing development mania. It's not my taste, but I can see where it was a big advance for the workers who bought affordable houses there. Folksingers on the other hand, were appalled by it, and one of the catchiest folksongs I know was written to ridicule it (actually it ridiculed Daly City, which was a smaller version of Levittown):
Geez, workers having their own houses, sending their kids to universities, having children who became doctors, lawyers and executives...sounds like a success story to me, but what do I know?
Anyway, I have to admit that the initial uniformity of the houses was a bit off putting. I bring the subject up because I live in one of those post WWII developments myself. Yes, me...I live in one of the dreaded hell holes reviled by folksingers. I thought readers might like to see how one of these places evolved into whatever it is today.
Of course I live on the West Coast where houses tend to be lower and wider than ones in the East Coast example, but I imagine the square footage is roughly the same...and our tract houses are made of stucco, which is as "ticky-tacky" as you can get.
My development was created in the early 50s. These houses are cheery and comfortable, and they're all made of cheap materials available at any Home Depot-type store. They're affordable and easy to repair. So why did they excite such fury in the folksingers?
Er, the telephone pole is actually straight, the lean comes from a camera distortion.
I imagine that these houses looked bleak and arid when they were new, but they didn't stay that way. People planted trees and shrubs, and tinkered together add-ons. I wouldn't be surprised if Levittowners did the same thing.
I'd need more photos to do justice to the subject, but this is all I've got so I'll end for now. No wait, I have a couple more pictures with a different emphasis. I'll put those up......
Okay, how do you like this porch (above) and front door? "What porch? What door?" you say? Good question! Well, you can't see them because they're covered with leaves and branches. I pity the poor mailman who no doubt gets scratched to ribbons every time he delivers a letter.
Actually, lots of doors around here are hidden behind thorns and bramble. The developers in this area were real pranksters, real rubber chicken and joy buzzer types.
How do you like that phony roof trim that leads to nowhere? Variations of that are aaaaall over the place here. I'll take some pictures of it and you won't believe what you see! I only wish I could show you the built-in birdhouse that's out of frame. It dominates the front of the house. You could put an ostrich in it.
8 comments:
Yes, lots of trees to be seen in Levittown, at least on the bits covered by Google Streetview, though maybe not as exotic varieties as on your street. And interesting wildlife too. I prefer neighbourhoods that are a bit more cosily congested though.
I love the scenery of California but have never gone before. Too bad you have to pay enormous taxes just to live there. It's one of the most expensive states in the country to live in outside of New York and New Jersey. How do you manage?
I imagined that you lived in some big, extravagant, fancy house somewhere outside of Los Angeles and Hollywood. I didn't know they had these modest homes out in that area too.
Joshua, Kellie: Well, Levittown's an extreme case. We'd all prefer a more organic, less planned look. That kind of thing started in the minimalist 50s when Corbusier was trying to bulldoze old Paris and replace it with shoebox highrises. That doesn't let the folksingers off the hook, though.
Developments needed reform but they were still a huge advance for workers who'd only had crowded apartments before.
According to Christopher Hitchens, satirist Tom Lehrer described "Little Boxes" as "the most sanctimonious song ever written".
Roberto: True, so true! The taxes here are crippling and they're expected to rise again soon.
That's one of the paradoxes of American leftist culture, including the folk revival: the way it seems to despise in practice people/things it supports in theory. Mass housing for the working man is one good example. Another is the condemnation of popular music for its very popularity. For example, Alan Lomax, one of the founding fathers of the folk revival, was going around in the early 1940s recording old Dixieland style jazz musicians. He thought all current, big band jazz was decadent and corrupt, because it was popular and commercialized, and so he wanted to capture as much 'pure' unspoiled, uncommercialized jazz on record before the old guys died off. He asked one clarinet player to play him a tune. The guy played some chart-topper by Benny Goodman or Artie Shaw under the assumption that Lomax might be his ticket to a hit record. Lomax, who despised pop radio and never listened to it, wasn't even aware of the fact that he wasn't getting blues straight from the bayou, and the recording was released as an example of the real thing.
I always used to love those weird roof trim pieces when I was a kid. I would imagine they were ramps to get on the roof or cubbies for the ultimate hide-and-go-seek spot.
Stehen: Fascinating and true! It is odd that the beatniks and intellectuals fixated on Dixieland and abstract bop, but not on swing, which was immensely creative. As a result the whole jitterbug era is inadequately documented.
I'd like to see film of the kind of individual dancing styles you could see at the Savoy Ballroom in its heyday, but it doesn't exist.
Even the present isn't well documented. Somebody should start filming the dance styles you see in black clubs, but if they are, I'm not seeing it.
Well, actually the one in PA was the second mass-produced suburb. I'm from the original Levittown in Long Island, NY. My house is a Levit-style house, or was one until we did serious renovations about 10 years ago. Most people have done the same, a very small percentage resemble their original form.
It's an interesting study to walk around and see the renovations and other alterations people have made. I actually find most of the houses pretty ugly, with some really odd choices like the bush covering the porch in your example. Some are really appealing though. One thing I have noticed is the designs of newer houses have become more and more cookie cutter. In the neighboring wealthy towns the houses are much more uniform. Strange that when people are forced to conform they want to rebel, but when given a choice they tend to conform.
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