US History

Postwar United States (1945 to early 1970s)

This collection uses primary sources to explore the postwar growth of the American suburbs.

A photograph of William Levitt, builder of the archetypal cities of Levittown, New York, and Levittown, Pennsylvania, circa 1940-49.

A photo of a prefabricated Cape Cod home from Levittown, 1947.

A photograph of Levittown, Pennsylvania.

A streetcar advertisement for Federal Housing Administration home financing, circa 1950.

The advertisement reads, "With a small down payment your rent money will buy a home. Consult your architect, builder, material dealer or any participating financial institution. Federal Housing Administration.”

A 1947 photograph of a full parking lot outside a factory in Lawrence, Massachusetts.

A 1950s postcard of a drive-in restaurant. Drive-in restaurants were part of the rapid growth of car culture.

A 1963 cartoon about the “safety” of the suburbs.

A 1959 photo of women receiving gifts from the California Homeowners Service Club, which helped connect them with home maintenance services.

A 1971 cartoon depicting President Nixon responding to housing equality legislation.

A 1952 photo of a white American family posing in front of their suburban home.

A 1971 cartoon of a black man trying to purchase a home in the suburbs.

An illustration from *Houses for Tomorrow*, 1944.

A poster for the first movie adaptation of *The Stepford Wives*, a science fiction book about submissive robot wives in a New York suburb. 

Questions

1. Using the sources in this set, explain who was moving to the suburbs during this period and why. Who was not included? Why?

2. What does the [1947 photograph of a full parking lot](http://dp.la/primary-source-sets/postwar-rise-of-the-suburbs/sources/224) tell us about the role of cars in suburban life?

3. Look at the [1950s postcard of a drive-in restaurant](http://dp.la/primary-source-sets/postwar-rise-of-the-suburbs/sources/225). In addition to drive-ins, what other businesses flourished when cars became central to suburban life? 

4. How do the three political cartoons characterize the concerns of suburban life? 


Activity

Using evidence from this set, write an essay that describes women’s roles in suburban life. How might these roles have changed from city life? How were suburban women stereotyped? Which women were excluded from suburban life? 

Teaching Guide: Exploring the Postwar Rise of the Suburbs

Resources

1. [America on the Move: City and Suburb](http://amhistory.si.edu/onthemove/exhibition/exhibition_15_2.html), National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. 

2. [Suburban Growth](http://www.ushistory.org/us/53b.asp), ushistory.org. 

3. [Boomtown! The great suburban demographic shift](http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/culture/boomtown-the-great-suburban-demographic-shift/6808/), PBS. 

4. [Mrs. America: Women's Roles in the 1950s](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/pill/peopleevents/p_mrs.html), PBS. 

5. [Levittown: Building the Suburban Dream](http://statemuseumpa.org/levittown/one/b.html), The State Museum of Pennsylvania. 

Overview

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.

English

Postwar Rise of the Suburbs

postwar-american-suburbs_03_e97b6d5fda18f2e1a7b6dd02720296f6.jpg

Courtesy of Cornell University via ARTStor.

Reps, John William, “Wide-angle large-scale single-family residential suburban development (Levittown, Pennsylvania, USA),” Digital Public Library of America, https://dp.la/item/e97b6d5fda18f2e1a7b6dd02720296f6.

A photograph of Levittown, Pennsylvania.

Cite this item

Tips for Students

Item 3 of 13 in the Primary Source Set Postwar Rise of the Suburbs