For 60,000 People

Most U.S. cities, growing up haphazardly from cowpath to Main Street, needed 100 years or more before their population reached the 60,000 mark. But in Bucks County, Pa., a new city for 60,000 people is rising dramatically from 5,000 acres that were wood lot and farmland less than a year ago. By 1954's end, if all goes according to plan, Levittown, Pa. will be a complete community, ranking in size with such older Quaker State sisters as Bethlehem, York, Lancaster, Johnstown and Chester.

The current issue of HOUSE & HOME reporting on the new city's construction, says: "Nothing like it has ever happened before. This is the free enterprise system at its lustiest."

The free enterprisers making the building miracle come to pass are the famed team who gave their name to suburban Levittown on New York's Long Island: brothers William and Alfred and father Abraham Levitt. Says HOUSE & HOME:

"In Levittown I, the Levitts didn't know their own strength. They bought land in relatively small parcels and gradually built a town. Of necessity the town grew irregularly, streets were sometimes a maze, commercial areas were located by chance."

Levittown II is all plan and purpose, down to the location and design of every house, store, school, road, park, playground, filling station and small factory site. The Levitts have even chosen the colors of the houses, named the streets, decided where to plant 250,000 trees and shrubs and "carried their meticulous construction to a point where 8 lbs. of yellow nails are delivered (on time) to every seventh house--which happens to have yellow siding."

Details from the blueprint of the new city:

P:Eight "master blocks," each covering about 1 sq. mi. and having at its center a school, churches, recreation area and swimming pool. P:Three or four "neighborhoods" of 400 to 600 families within each master block. P:Segregated areas for business and light industry. P:A main shopping center (55 acres) conveniently located near the downtown business district. Some 500 applications for space have poured in from merchants; the city's shopping center will probably become a center for all of lower Bucks County within a radius of 15 to 25 miles. There will also be small groups of neighborhood stores (food, drugs, etc.). P:Doctors, dentists, lawyers and other professionals will have a special building off the shopping center. P:Streets are carefully plotted--through roads for fast traffic, all residences within easy, safe walking distance of schools (saving the expense of school buses). P:No parks just for sitting (the Levitts found on Long Island that people prefer to sit in their own yards, want parks for swimming, sports, etc.), but plenty of recreational grounds and athletic fields.

The Levitts' standard house (two bedrooms, a study-bedroom, bath, kitchen, living room, carport with storage space) will sell for $10,500. For those who can pay for more, there will be a bigger house priced up to $18,000.

More than 3,200 families have already moved into partially built Levittown. They, and those who will follow them, are part of a fabulous industrial expansion in the Delaware Valley north of Philadelphia. Last week U.S. Steel's huge new Fairless Works poured its first iron (see BUSINESS & FINANCE). The furnaces and forges of Fairless are only 3 miles from the gardens and homes of Levittown II.

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