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Ranch v. Cape Cod. The influence of Levitt & Sons on housing goes much further than the thresholds of its own houses. Its methods of mass production are being copied by many of the merchant builders in the U.S., who are putting up four of every five houses built today. It is such mass production on one huge site which is enabling U.S. builders to meet the postwar demand and to create the biggest housing boom in U.S. history.
In the record year of 1949, when 1,025,-100 dwelling units were started, builders thought they had reached their peak by starting about 104,000 units in one month. Yet in May this year, 140,000 units were started—and June was probably even better. This year the U.S. will probably build 1,250,000 units; there is scarcely a city without some big new development. Though some of the houses are ugly and some projects poorly planned, most had one thing in common: the houses are nearly all "ranch houses," a loose term for any house whose rooms are concentrated on the first floor.
On a 220acre farm near Lexington, Mass., Boston's Builder Joseph F. Kelly, who in three years has sold about 3,000 Cape Cod houses, is starting work on 400 ranch-type houses to sell for less than $10,000. In Portland, Ore., Builder Franklin T. White is frankly copying many features of Levitt's ranch-type house, adding some of his own—and selling it at a higher price ($8,500). In Philadelphia, Matthew McCloskey Jr. is at work building 522 Levitt-type houses, though they do not contain all the Levitt equipment.
Outside Los Angeles, on what was once a huge beet farm, Aetna Construction, Inc. and Biltmore Homes, Inc. are building 17,150 one-story houses, all monotonously arranged on a 3,500-acre gridiron, just about eight feet apart. The prices: $7,825 to $9,600.
In Richmond, Calif., Builder Paul Trousdale (TIME, Dec. 2, 1946) has teamed up with ex-Prizefighter Joe Louis and plans to build 4,000 houses for Negroes. In San Francisco, Builder Henry Doelger has put up so many rows of his five-room, white stucco houses (one story above a garage on a 25-ft. lot) that local wags call the southwest corner of the city the "White Cliffs of Doelger." Just outside Chicago, Builder Nathan Manilow, whose well-planned Park Forest development on a 2,400-acre plot makes a complete city of 3,000 rental houses, is getting ready to build another 2,800 houses to sell for $8,500 to $14,500.
The Great Change. Yet the demand for low-priced houses is still above the supply, notably in cities like Chicago, hampered by antiquated building codes and tight union restrictions. Furthermore, those who had hoped prices would drop are sadly disappointed. The prices of lumber, plumbing and heating equipment, etc. are all on the rise again. Some builders are also beginning to jack up their prices. When they do, many find that it is just as easy to sell their houses as before.
To a man, Bill Levitt and all the other builders know exactly whom to thank for the boom and the steadily expanding market. Said one San Francisco builder last week: "If it weren't for the Government, the boom would end overnight."