Advertisement for Levittown ranch house

Levittown was in many ways the very epicenter of the United States post-World War II explosion: it represented both the positive extension of an American Dream characterized by home ownership and the racially-segregated limitations of that dream (Levittown did not have its first black homeowner until 1955). The Levitt family - a family of realtors composed of father Abraham and sons William and Alfred - acquired a large parcel of land in the community previously known as Island Trees and began constructing houses there in early 1947. Over the next 4 years, the community changed its name to Levittown and grew to be more than 17,000 houses, including larger later-designed ranch houses, which had a somewhat larger floorplan than their Cape Cod predecessors.