This article was published by the Observer Sunday Magazine (UK) on 12/ 23/01 and the Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine (07/28/02)

Green lawns. Tupperware parties. Trips to the mall in the big boxy car and rows of ticky-tacky houses: This was my suburbia, the one stored away in memory all those years I lived abroad.

I grew up in Levittown, probably the most famous suburb in the world. Until the late 1940s, American suburbs had been largely based on British models - stately homes on tree-lined streets for the upper-middle classes. But during the acute housing shortage after W.W.II, the developer William Levitt introduced innovative assembly-line techniques to the construction site - and in the process, turned the dream of home-ownership into a reality for thousands of young American families – including my parent’s. Fifty years ago, a $10 deposit, and $100 downpayment didn’t just buy a house, it bought the average American a piece of the American Dream.

But Levittown, Pa. wasn’t merely a tract of identical houses. Bill Levitt had learned his lesson from criticism of his earlier housing development. In sharp contrast to the endless rows of look-alike houses in Long Island, this Levittown would be ‘the most perfectly planned community in America’. But from the very beginning, Levittown – probably the biggest experiment in mass-housing of the century - was under constant scrutiny by journalists, social critics and city planners from around the world. While critics claimed Levittown would turn into an ‘incubator for moral and intellectual atrophy’, the New York Times hailed it as a great and unique achievement.

And yet, to the best of my memory, it was a place where nothing much ever happened. Oh –in 1957, Levittown’s first African-American family received such an unfriendly welcome that police protection was needed. And in 1977, the country’s first gasoline riot took place here. But although still not forgotten, these disturbances faded as people became immersed in the endless demands of suburban life: chauffeuring kids to scouts, mowing lawns, fixing the car and working on the house. As Levitt himself put it, homeowners would never become communists because they were too damn busy.

To me, it seemed as if Levittown existed under some kind of protective bubble that kept it at one remove from the problems – and pleasures – of the city. Our crime rate was low,
but so was cultural stimulation. Moms got dressed up for the occasional matinee, dads commuted to work each morning, rarely getting home before the dinner dishes were washed, and kids watched a lot of TV about, well, life in the suburbs. Television loved the burbs, and portrayed an idealized version of them back to us: the understanding mom, the grouchy dad, the wisecracking kids and wacky neighbors. We were first-generation suburbanites growing up with a steady diet of make-believe role models - The Brady Bunch, Leave it To Beaver, Ozzie and Harriet, Rob and Laura – slightly eccentric yet curiously serene people who never encountered a problem that couldn’t be solved before the final credits.

And that was my suburbia. It was safe, it was serene, and I couldn’t wait to escape. And sometime in the late ‘70s, I did; resolving henceforth to live somewhere more in the middle of things, somewhere where things happened.

And a lot did happen.

While I worked in London making TV documentaries, the American suburbs were quietly and steadily expanding. By the time I moved to Hong Kong, in 1991, America had officially become a ‘suburban nation’; the first country where more people lived in the suburbs than in the rural and urban areas combined. Levittown, long held up as an example of conformity and monotony, a place whose very name became synonymous with suburbia, had started the vast migration from city to suburb that forever altered the geography of America. From my new standpoint in Hong Kong, a place scrambling to find a new balance between changing sovereignties, Levittown seemed like an anesthetized state of mind; a place of endless malls, tidy streets and manicured lawns, existing without conflict or change.

In 1998, I left Hong Kong, and returned to America for an extended visit on my way to Australia. Various factors conspired to anchor me in Levittown, and, with the community’s 50th anniversary fast approaching, I decided to photograph my hometown.

Suburbia’s rows of ticky-tacky houses have always been the backdrop for writers, artists and filmmakers – and rarely the subject. Roaming around Levittown in my old Ford Escort, I discovered that the visual landscape of my childhood, which had unleashed so much harsh criticism in the past, had been transformed into an exuberant architectural Babel. In a place famous for its conformity and monotony, home renovation seemed a testimony to man’s need for self-expression and individuality. Home ownership was still considered a miracle - and people were determined to make that miracle even better.

And yet, although the place had been extensively remodeled and renovated, it occurred to me that suburbia still hadn’t been redefined – especially in my own mind. Over the years, I had regaled friends with stories of an almost mythical place whose very sense of normalcy defied complexity: it was either Leave it to Beaver or American Beauty, with nothing much in between. In order to realize my photography project, I had to get behind the façade of cliché. Camera in hand, I soon discovered a diverse community of white, black, old, young, married, divorced and single people. Although Levittown was still predominantly white and working-class, its proximity to Philadelphia and New York made it attractive to immigrants and professionals. I found single-parent families, people juggling jobs, family and college; people whose lives were as intricate as any city dweller’s. As the singer Billy Joel (another Levittown escapee) succinctly put it: "It’s not as easy as saying that Levittown was a cultural wasteland or that it was a boon to the returning GIs. There were a lot of things in the middle. There were a lot of different lives being lived. And there were a lot of hopes in that place - a lot of dreams fulfilled and a lot of dreams dashed."

Levittown had evolved into a more complex place, yet the maple-lined streets and tidy green lawns still exuded the same sense of drowsy serenity. The main issues of concern were still inward-looking, tightly focused on family, safe neighborhoods and decent schools. History was something that happened overseas, serious crime stayed pretty much in the city, and Levittown remained a good place to bring up the kids. The protective bubble was still firmly fixed in place.

Even on September 11th, the tragedy seemed to happen in a far-away place. My neighbor (a Columbia graduate who is married to an Algerian environmental engineer) reassured worried overseas friends that she was far from the danger zone. ‘I’m in Levittown,’ she told them, as if the very name were synonymous with safety. Later, she admitted that the sight of her laundry flapping on the line in the backyard reinforced her feeling of being in a safe haven.

It was hard not to feel sealed off from the disaster. That morning, the sunlight bathed the green lawns and maple trees in a golden hue, and the only sound was the far-off popping of a basketball and the drone of a lawn mower. Only the achingly blue sky, ominously empty of planes, bore testimony to the horror unfolding 90 miles away. But even the impossible TV images couldn’t dislodge the notion that this was yet another ‘city’ tragedy – albeit on an unprecedented scale. Suburbia was still a safe haven.

It took less than 24 hours to dispel that notion forever. Hundreds of cars were left unclaimed at nearby train stations, and in the following weeks the local newspaper announced a steady stream of funerals and memorial services. Lorraine Bay, one of the United Airline flight attendants, was from Levittown, and when Pennsylvania’s Governor Ridge was recruited to head Homeland Security, Lieutenant Governor Schweiker – a Levittown native – took his place.

Levittown was now connected to the events, and the connection extended far beyond the eighty-five minute train ride into NYC. People donated money and time to charitable groups. They showed solidarity by snapping up flags so fast that Wal-Mart and K-Mart combined couldn’t keep up with the demand. Lawns, houses and cars – those all-important symbols of suburbia that tell the world who you are – were covered in red, white and blue. There were flags on poles, flags on bumper stickers, roofs, windows and car antennas. Little flags, flags as big as garage doors, flags covering garage doors. And just as people started to put the flags away, as if for winter, the news of anthrax pulled us into another sphere of danger. The first case popped up in Florida and now a Levittown man – a postal worker – was recently diagnosed with the deadly disease. And as a sign of the times, a package was delivered to my home by a FedEx worker in latex-gloves. On the surface, everything remained the same – the lawns, the patios and tree-lined streets – but the protective bubble is gone.

If the World Trade Center was a powerful symbol of American financial power, Levittown is an equally important symbol of the American Dream – and how the majority of Americans really live. Americans are told that any kid can grow up to become president, but for most people, the America Dream takes real shape with that first downpayment on a house in the suburbs. And although the suburbs – and suburbanite – have long been blamed for all the cultural ills of society – from mass commercialism to alienation, the dream of suburbia - of a house, a quiet tree-lined street, good schools and low crime - is a dream shared by millions of people around the world.

In many ways Levittown is a microcosm of America, and the hopes and dreams of the people in this famous prototype suburb are the dreams of all America. And these dreams – of home, community and a safe place to bring up children - seem more precious now than ever before.


Joan Klatchko
jokla@earthlink.net