Extensive suburban housing development in Hempstead, Long Island, N.Y. Developed 1946–51 by the firm of Levitt and Sons, Inc., it was an early example of a completely preplanned and mass-produced housing complex.
It contained thousands of low-cost homes (with accompanying shopping centers, playgrounds, swimming pools, community halls, and schools). Levitt repeated the formula in Bucks County, Pa. (1951–55). The name Levittown became equated with similar developments built across the country in the postwar building boom. Though once widely deplored, his towns differ from other, usually monotonous, middle-class speculative developments in their meandering roads and lush plantings.