Levittown, NY: what gives?

November 11, 2008 8:33 PM

We are thinking of moving to Levittown, NY from Brooklyn. Of course after finding the house we are considering buying, I'm now hearing from different "long islanders" who scoff at the thought of ever stepping foot in Levittown. What gives? We were there a number of times and it looked like a very nice, well kept, working-class neighborhood. Are looks deceiving? Does anyone know what the resale value is on levittown homes? we're expecting to pay around 300k for a five bedroom / two bath home on a 60x100 lot in the Levittown school district. We gave a seven month old who is the main reason that prompted us to move out of our decrepit apartment. Thanks for any suggestions/advice!!!
posted by anonymous to Home & Garden (5 answers total)

Are you aware of the history of Levittown? It was the country's first mass-produced suburb. In a way, Levittown was ground zero for the explosion of suburban sprawl that covered America after World War II, which gives it kind of a bad rap. Despite the fact that homeowners have since evolved the houses there to be more unique and that former residents have fond memories of the place, its reputation for homogeneity and blandness lives on.
posted by driveler at 9:11 PM on November 11, 2008 [1 favorite]

Interesting article regarding the transformation of Levittown, with a slideshow, from the New York Times.

"Sixty years ago this month, the first families moved into this suburban outpost, and soon there were 17,447 houses that as the song “Little Boxes” noted derisively, were “all made out of ticky-tacky, and they all looked just the same.”
posted by plexi at 10:49 PM on November 11, 2008

When I think of Levittown, I think of the worst excesses of cookie-cutter construction and suburban sprawl. But I've never been there, and probably neither have many of your interlocutors. Such is often the case for neighborhoods with bad reputations.

There are many people who live in the New York area who are just a little bit snobby about location. So what? You don't have to impress them.
posted by grouse at 9:04 AM on November 12, 2008

Agree with grouse, you're hearing opinions from folks based on Levittown's bad rep as the start of suburban cookie-cutter sprawl. In reality, if the cookie-cutter aspect of the neighborhoods doesn't bother you (and honestly, with all the home improvement folks have done over the past 60 years, the cookie-cutter origins are pretty effectively eradicated), Levittown is a great place to live. You're near NYC (40 minute train ride from Wantagh just south), Nassau Coliseum (15 min drive down Hempstead Trpk), 10 mins from a quality hospital, half-hour drive to Jones Beach... All manner of shops and restaurants from Mom & Pops to chains, 20 mins west or east gets you to a premier Shopping Mall, good schools, immediate access to Wantagh Pkwy and from there Southern State/Northern State Pkwys and all points east and west, on and on. It's actually one of the finer middle-class neighborhoods in Nassau County, an excellent place for kids to grow up, I have to stop writing everything that's coming to mind. The only negative thing I can think of really is the unfair bias against it from it's history in the growth of homogenous surburbia. Also Nassau County on the whole had serious tax/budget problems a few years back that reportedly would devalue neighborhoods there, but in reality that seemed to have zero effect when the housing boom was active and they seem to have gotten as much of a grip on that count as any other place in the country these days.
posted by Argenteus at 9:25 AM on November 12, 2008 [1 favorite]

I think grouse and Argenteus pegged it. I work right near Levittown, and it's a fine place. People hold it up as the origin of "cookie cutter" homes, but it is similar to many Long Island areas.

Let us know when you move out here, so we can do a Long Island meetup...
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 11:14 AM on November 12, 2008