Levitt, William Jaird (1907-1994), was a pioneer in the development of large-scale suburbs in the United States. Near the end of World War II (1939-1945), Levitt saw a tremendous need for affordable housing for returning veterans. He used mass-production techniques to build inexpensive single-family houses on a 1,200-acre (486-hectare) tract of land on Long Island in New York. From 1947 to 1951, the firm of Levitt & Sons, Inc., constructed 17,450 homes on the land parcel, which came to be known as Levittown. See Levittown
Levitt developed two other Levittowns, one (now called Willingboro) in New Jersey and the other in Pennsylvania. His planning and building methods have been repeated in the construction of many suburbs of the United States. Levitt was born on Feb. 11, 1907, in the Brooklyn section of New York City. He died on Jan. 28, 1994.
