Levitt & Sons

Levitt & Sons was a real estate development company founded by Abraham Levitt and later managed by his son William Levitt. The company is most famous for having built the town of Levittown, New York. The company's designs and building practices totally revolutionized the entire Home Building Industry and altered America's landscape with massive suburban communities.

Levitt & Sons had a profound effect on America's post-World War II economy, and William Levitt was named one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. Historian Kenneth T. Jackson wrote of Levitt & Sons, "The family that had the greatest impact on postwar housing in the United States was Abraham Levitt and his sons, William and Alfred, who ultimately built more than 140,000 houses and turned a cottage industry into a major manufacturing process,"

Abraham Levitt founded a real-estate development company near the start of the Great Depression. His son William became company president at the age of 22, handling the advertising, sales, and financing. Alfred Levitt, still a teenager, became vice president of design and drafted plans for the first Levitt house, a six bedroom, two bathroom Tudor style home that sold for over $14,000 in 1929 (roughly $195,000 today). The Levitts sold 600 of these upper middle-class homes, part of the Strathmore project, in four years during the Great Depression.

William earned a reputation as the person to see for high-end, custom homes on Long Island's North Shore, called the Gold Coast. Prior to World War II, Levitt & Sons built mostly upscale housing on and around Long Island, New York. During the 1930s, they built the North Strathmore community at Manhasset, New York, on the former Onderdonk farm. The North Stratford homes sold for $9,100 to $18,500. The Levitts built another 1,200 homes in Manhasset, Great Neck, and Westchester County. Radio stars, prominent journalists, surgeons, business people, and lawyers bought the upscale Levitt houses. Selling these homes made the Levitt family rich.

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