The family, ultimately under the leadership of
William Levitt, built the first planned community from what were once potato farms.
"(New York real estate developer
William Levitt) lost all his money.
Trump also touched on some possible adult themes while he told a winding story about real estate developer
William Levitt.
William Levitt, the eldest son, applied his wartime experience building barracks with the Navy Seabees to traditional wood-frame construction.
William Levitt, a pioneer of the home building industry, founded the company that is most famous for building Levittown, N.Y., Levittown, Pa., and Willingboro, N.J.
Along with
William Levitt and Fred Trump, LeFrak was an early champion of affordable middle-class housing after World War II.
BEFORE
WILLIAM LEVITT BOUGHT a potato field in Long Island, N.Y., in 1946, the average American home builder constructed four or five homes a year.
This is an important point, and I acknowledged the federal role in providing financing to
William Levitt. In fact, without it, it is unlikely Levittown would have been built (at least not in 1949).
While admitting that suburbia is by design segregationist (one of the most interesting chapters in the book recounts Senator Joseph McCarthy and
William Levitt's collaboration in killing the Taft-Ellender-Wagner Housing Act that would have created federally subsidized housing in the suburbs), they spend a disproportionate amount of ink tracing the history of Long Island's very few integrated or predominantly minority suburbs.
William Levitt had a winning formula for turning out affordable homes at assembly-line speed.
Post-World War II's housing shortage prompted architect
William Levitt to design Long Island's Levittown, whose 17,000 cookie-cutter homes seemed the height of affordable modernity in 1947.
William Levitt is considered to have been the inventor of modern suburbia.