Title: Suburbanization in the United States after 1945 | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History
Headings: Suburbanization in the United States after 1945
Suburbanization in the United States after 1945
Summary
Keywords
1945–1970: Era of Mass-Suburbanization
Postwar Real Estate Development
The City-Suburb Divide: Urban–Suburban Inequality in the Postwar Era
Race, Ethnicity, and Exclusion
Social Life of Postwar Suburbanites
“Culture Wars” over the Postwar Suburbs
Political Life
1970–Present: Growth and Diversification
Land Development and Real Estate
Table 1. The Growth of Metropolitan and Suburban Areas in the United States, 1940–2010
Metropolitanism
Social Diversification
Social Life
Politics across Diverse Suburbia
Reforming Suburbia
Suburban Crisis, Suburban Regeneration
Discussion of the Literature
Primary Sources
Further Reading
Notes

Content: Emblematic of the new builders was William J. Levitt, who joined his immigrant father in the construction business in the 1930s. After experimenting with mass production during WWII, in the late 1940s the Levitts built what would become the most famous housing development of the age, the 17,000-home Levittown on Long Island, New York. By the mid-1950s, Levitt was the nation’s largest builder, with an annual production of more than 2,000 houses. 9 While large-scale builders such as Levitt attracted the lion’s share of media attention, more typical were smaller-volume and custom builders who constructed fewer than 250 homes per year, but they too turned out homes uniform in appearance and amenities, reflecting the broad standardization of the industry and the landscapes it was producing. 10
The typical postwar home of the late 1940s was the “minimum house,” a reference to the FHA’s minimum building standards. They were small, often cramped for families in the midst of a baby boom, but they were considered entirely modern with their up-to-date appliances, mechanical systems and utilities (with costs for everything neatly rolled into a 25-year mortgage). The average home in 1950 was 983 square feet (down from 1,140 in 1940 ). It had 5 to 6 rooms—typically two bedrooms, one bathroom, a living room and kitchen on a single floor. 11 The size and simple construction of these homes encouraged owners to remodel as their families changed. At Levittown, Long Island, the “Cape Cod” house model included a half-story “expansion attic” upstairs.