I have a photograph taken in Levittown, New York, sometime in the late 1940s. It’s of three men pouring concrete from a truck. The driver is standing by his door and just watching. The second man is standing on the fender and working the lever to release the concrete. The third man is directing the chute with his right hand. He’s wearing a sailor’s cap and his left hand is on his hip. He looks a bit like Elvis.
Off in the distance, I can see some of the 17,447 finished houses that William Levitt built on what was once a potato farm. The Levitt workers were finishing a house every two hours, using mass production techniques and interchangeable parts. The property had its own lumber mill and cement factory. No house would have a basement. Levitt had to appeal to the federal government to get away with that. The local politicians feared what would happen when less-affluent people moved into these very affordable houses, but most of those people were GIs returning from the war, so Levitt got his way.