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| Home Front: Politix | |
| Change Makes a Call on Levittown | |
| 2008-04-06 | |
| By MICHAEL SOKOLOVE The Obama for President headquarters in Levittown, Pa., is set on a busy thoroughfare just to the east of where all the houses begin — 17,311 of them built by the developer William Levitt between 1952 and 1957. Right next door is the Dairy Delite, which began selling soft-serve ice cream 50 years ago and is still going strong. About four miles north, along the Delaware River, is what Levittowners have always just called “the mill” — the mighty Fairless Works, a U.S. Steel plant that grew up alongside the town and at its peak employed some 10,000 workers. Any longtime resident could lead you to the other sites where the men of Levittown found muscular, good-paying work — Vulcanized Rubber and Plastics; Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing (3M); Thiokol, a defense contractor; the big General Motors plant across the river in Trenton. They worked their shifts and came home to their young families and their little patches of green. Many had moved here from the cramped neighborhoods of Philadelphia’s blue-collar “river wards” or from coal country in upstate Pennsylvania. You could call the Levittown experience the American dream, but that does not get to what was best about it: its concrete, earthbound specificity. The union wage. The house you could purchase in the mid-1950s for $8,990, with a down payment of $100. The elementary schools that Levitt & Sons put right in the neighborhoods, so that no young child would have to ride a bus. The Olympic-size public pools and the Levittown Shop-a-Rama, with its department stores and soda fountains and its parking for 6,000 cars. Last month, as the epic struggle for the Democratic presidential nomination between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton reached Pennsylvania, I came to watch it through the prism of Levittown — its past and present. The dream is vanishing in the same specific ways it came to life. The young men of the community no longer follow their fathers into the mill, because the work force at U.S. Steel has dwindled to fewer than 100. A Spanish-owned company now occupies part of the site, where it makes wind turbines. The old 3M plant has become something called the Bristol Commerce Center, and most of the other manufacturers are long gone. The town’s main intersection, Five Points, is dotted with check-cashing agencies and pawnshops. The original Shop-a-Rama was leveled...
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| Posted by:Fred |
| #9 Levittown was American mass production brought to the housing industry, what Ford was to making the automobile affordable for the unwashed masses. Together they, with the help of the post WWII GI Bill homeownership, brought suburbanization and the ability of the common man to establishment his family and himself beyond a four room apartment ghetto in the post-agricultural urban society. The |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2008-04-06 15:29 |
| #8 Another steaming pile of crap from the NYT. My credentials: I have lived in the immediate vicinity of Levittown, PA for the last 27 years. This article takes the slant of a grumpy old unemployed steel plant worker. Everything is negative and in need of change. But it is largely so slanted that doesn't even approximate the truth. Here are some examples: "The mill" and numerous other unionized smokestack industries cited have been essentially gone for decades. They're old news. Most of the people who worked there in the 50's and 60's are way past retirement age now. Most younger people have moved on from "muscular, good-paying work" to more-cerebral good-paying work. Levittown is neither a ghost town or a poverty zone. The "Levittown Shop-a-Rama, with its department stores and soda fountains" is also old news. It was eclipsed three decades ago by the very-modern and much larger Oxford Valley Mall which is better located to draw customers from both Levittown and many surrounding areas. I was just there. It's thriving. "The dream is vanishing" -- because the majority of Levittown homes have been remodeled from Bill Levitt's little boxes into full-sized less-affordable homes. If "the dream" is a nasty hot job at the steel mill and a little box home then they're right -- those days are gone. And good riddance. The next generation is aspiring to better jobs and homes in adjacent upscale communities like Yardley and Lower Makefield that were mostly farm land when "the mill" had its day. "The townÂ’s main intersection, Five Points, is dotted with check-cashing agencies and pawnshops." The "town" is a sprawling set of communities including over ten square miles. It does not have a "main intersection" any more that the U.S. has a main intersection. Cherry-picking the Five Points intersection is like judging the U.S. by only observing a crack house in Chicago. This article is so slanted I surprised I didn't have to turn my monitor on end to read it. |
| Posted by: Darrell 2008-04-06 15:25 |
| #7 Which has been the mantra for most of the Northeast states for over a century. And just look at all they have to show for doing it... |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2008-04-06 12:31 |
| #6 “Just pull the big lever” Which has been the mantra for most of the Northeast states for over a century. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2008-04-06 12:29 |
| #5 But . . but . . . but . . . I thought suburbs like Leavittown were soul-destroying monuments to corporate AmeriKKKa's bland, bourgeoise, Fifties-vintage conformity. |
| Posted by: Mike 2008-04-06 11:54 |
| #4 What Mucek said. Income security, uber alles. |
| Posted by: no mo uro 2008-04-06 09:28 |
| #3 ...and, if I am elected, I will require that all buggy whips, horseshoes, corsets and shoe button hooks used in America are made in America... |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2008-04-06 08:12 |
| #2 "Just pull the big lever,” Mom said "Pull my finger" the Democrats said |
| Posted by: Frank G 2008-04-06 07:59 |
| #1 "When I turned 18, my mother instructed me on everything she believed I needed to know about voting. “Just pull the big lever,” she said, by which she meant the Democratic lever that automatically cast votes for the party’s entire ticket." This was the entire point of the article. Everything else was cover for pushing this concept. Remember, conservatives are all evil. /sarcasm off |
| Posted by: no mo uro 2008-04-06 07:39 |