Postwar Rise of the Suburbs

With the end of the Second World War, thousands of soldiers and their families were ready to get an education, find a job, and settle into an affordable home of their own. Many of them headed to the suburbs to do it. The first and largest prefabricated suburb was Levittown in Nassau County on Long Island, New York, which added thirty new houses per day at the height of its construction but initially excluded black residents. Suburban complexes like Levittown became a physical expression of the American Dream for thousands of people throughout the 1950s—all of them white and many of them fleeing the decay, and diversity, of urban America. The resources here, which include photographs, documents, cartoons, and advertisements, help to paint a picture of this unique time and place in American history.

Chicago citation style
Amy Rudersdorf. Postwar Rise of the Suburbs. 2015. Retrieved from the Digital Public Library of America, https://production.dp.la/primary-source-sets/postwar-rise-of-the-suburbs. (Accessed March 19, 2024.)
APA citation style
Amy Rudersdorf, (2015) Postwar Rise of the Suburbs. Retrieved from the Digital Public Library of America, https://production.dp.la/primary-source-sets/postwar-rise-of-the-suburbs
MLA citation style
Amy Rudersdorf. Retrieved from the Digital Public Library of America <https://production.dp.la/primary-source-sets/postwar-rise-of-the-suburbs>.
Note: These citations are programmatically generated and may be incomplete.