Posts tagged: 50s

At the time, most people lived close to the city center to work in factories, or they lived in rural communities to work on farms, according to economist Jay Zagorsky.

The 1950 Census found that 60% of people lived in cities, while 40% lived in the suburbs. 

Thanks to factors like the construction of highways, the development of new neighborhoods from farmland, and even safety in the event of an atomic attack, these percentages would soon shift drastically.

The GI Bill provided each returning soldier with benefits designed to stimulate economic growth. Each soldier was given a year of unemployment and free tuition to go to college. The military pledged to back all home loans, which allowed veterans to buy houses with little to no down payments. 

Shortly after WWII ended, the Baby Boom began. In 1946, 3.4 million babies were born, more than ever before, and 20% more than in 1945, per History.com. This trend continued into the ’50s.

By the end of the boom in 1964, this generation made up 40% of the country’s population.

Most historians think it was because Americans were eager to have families after having postponed marriage and childbirth because of the Great Depression and World War II.

Whatever the reason, people flocked to the suburbs to accommodate their growing families.

During the war, factories focused on creating wartime essentials, like airplanes and barracks. In the ’50s, they refocused their efforts on building home components and automobiles using the new practices — like the assembly line — they implemented in the war,

As a result, factories were able to produce materials for homes faster than ever before.

Levitt and Sons, a construction company, purchased a 7-square-mile plot of potato and onion farms in Long Island in 1947. They set out to build one of the first uniform suburban communities in the US.

The first homes in Levittown cost new residents around $7,000, The Guardian reported. For veterans, there was no down payment.

When adjusting for inflation, a Levittown home in 1950 would be roughly $97,000 in today’s money.

At first, all the homes were built in the same style, and some residents even admitted to walking into the wrong house at times because they couldn’t tell them apart, according to Khan Academy, citing Kenneth T. Jackson’s “Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States.”

With the growing number of children, outdoor spaces became increasingly important to the suburban neighborhood. 

At first, they were modest homes, but most families saw their new suburban lives as luxurious. 

Many Levittown homeowners learned homeownership responsibilities, such as tending to a lawn.

The suburb helped cement the idea of the “nuclear family” in American culture.

The shopping centers were called “village greens” and were designed to make the town more of a bustling community, per Encyclopedia.com.

Since the streets in the suburban neighborhood were considered safer than those in the city, parents used to allow children to bike around by themselves, per the National Center for Safe Routes to School.

The mortgage on a home in Levittown was reportedly about $29 per month, while most paid $90 per month in the city. 

By comparison, the average rent in New York City in 2026 is just under $3,500, according to Zillow. The monthly cost of a 30-year mortgage on a Levittown home today would be roughly $2,000.

The community has over 17,000 homes, making it one of the largest private housing projects in the history of the US.

Suburban home construction boomed in the 1950s. In fact, at least 15 million units were under construction by the end of the decade, according to the Wealth Management Group.

For years, there were rules that restricted minorities from buying homes in Levittown, and even as the Civil Rights Movement was starting to take form and the rest of the country began integrating after Brown v Board of Education in 1954, Levittown remained mostly white.

Two-thirds of Levittown residents today are white, according US Census estimates.

In 1952, William Cotter, a Black man, and his family, sublet a home at 26 Butternut Lane. When the lease was up, Levitt refused to renew it or sell them the home.

The refusal sparked support for the Cotters, and the family eventually purchased another home from a white homeowner.

The suburban boom corresponded with the expansion of interstate highways in the US, starting the modern iteration of the commute from the suburbs to the city.

In 1950, 80% of men in Levittown commuted to Manhattan for work, The Guardian reported.

When men left to fight in WWII, women began entering the workforce, gaining newfound independence and freedom. However, they were suddenly expected to give this up again and instead focus on childbearing and rearing.

In 1963, author Betty Friedan wrote in “The Feminine Mystique” that the suburbs “were burying women alive.” However, some believe that women’s dissatisfaction with staying home “contributed to the rebirth of the feminist movement in the 1960s,” History.com reported.

In 1959, women of Levittown, with children in hand, protested in favor of putting stop signs in an area with automobile-related deaths.

As American politics increasingly centered on anticommunism and Cold War tensions rose, Levittown and suburbs like it took on a symbolic meaning in American culture, representing prosperity and the “American Dream.”

Levitt was once quoted saying, “No man who owns his own house and lot can be a Communist. He has too much to do.”

In 2026, Levittown is still a sizable community with a population of about 50,000. Though it’s full of modern businesses and technology, the community still holds a legacy as a post-war suburban haven.