Happy Birthday Levitown

The article below is from the Charlotte Observer. Levitown, the first American suburb, is turning sixty. The suburb was and is an important housing option, but more and more people are realizing the value of Uptown Living. Charlotte center city living is a viable alternative for more people than ever. We have dozens of great projects being built and even more on the drawing board. There has never been a better time to experience urban living in Charlotte.

PARADE AND CELEBRATION TODAY
`Ideal community' of Levittown turns 60
Long Island suburb built for war veterans was immediate success
FRANK ELTMAN
Associated Press

LEVITTOWN, N.Y. --In 1951, 7-year-old Louise Cassano couldn't imagine a better life than the one here, where she rode her bicycle past rows of cookie-cutter houses, kids held backyard campouts in makeshift tents and nobody locked their front doors.

"It was an absolute ideal community," said Cassano, whose love affair with Levittown never waned -- she still lives in the Long Island town dubbed by some as America's first suburb.Cassano is among the organizers of a huge 60th birthday party for the Nassau County town, set for today and featuring high school bands, floats, local groups, war veterans and the Fire Department. Nearly two dozen original Levittown homeowners will serve as grand marshals.

It was October 1947 when developer William Jaird Levitt opened the first of what became 17,544 Cape Cod and ranch houses rising from blighted potato fields 40 miles east of New York City, handing post-World War II GIs the keys to their American Dream.

It was an instant success, a prototype widely chronicled and duplicated nationwide.
Cape Cods originally sold for $6,990; ranches were slightly more expensive. Each house had four rooms, a bath, an unfinished attic and amenities -- steel kitchen cabinets, Bendix washer, GE refrigerator, Hotpoint electric range.