They weren't the most impressive-looking houses: boxy and small, two bedrooms with a living room and kitchen, no basement, tossed up one after another in assembly-line fashion.
For certain families in the years after WWII, though, they were perfect — a chance to have a home of one's own, an answer to a serious housing shortage. So was born Levittown, about 40 miles outside of New York City on Long Island. It grew to more than 17,000 houses, the first wholly planned American suburb.
