ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Old Levittown House Designs

Greenbriar, Fairfax County Virginia, 2200 homes all of the same 6 designs, circa 1967-1971. The last of the Levitt communities. Easy to work on as once you did one the other types were all the same. Originally priced at about 15,000, now going for close to half a million.

He built 3 or four sites in Jersey, but then came the copy cats, kendal Park, was one of the largest copy cat builders, we were paid 35 cents an hour, to stage materisl, out of school early, and we would pile in the car and head for the job.

Okay. Wow, I didn't know he had <b>that</b> many.

Ian A.

Ian,

They would build model homes, take orders, then if they had eniough intrest, start building, many developers copied the levit homes, some were sucessful, and some never built more then the models, they called these levit homes, when in fact they were developed by other builders, riding on the levit name, the projects in somerset, and old bridge, were called levit homes, but were copies, of levits success, levit had developed the first production homes, making them affordable to almost everyone, after the long island project, the whole country changed the way homes were built.

This is a good post, i wonder if anyone still has an electrical plan set, they actually had, wiring plans.

[This message has been edited by LK (edited 07-04-2006).]

Thanks LK.

Ian A.

Over on this side of the Atlantic, we had large numbers of "prefabs" (pre-fabricated) homes erected to help relieve the acute housing shortage at the end of World War II.

There were various designs, the Arcon models being one of the best known. Various construction methods were used, but tubular steel roof supports with asbestos roof sheets and a kind of cement sheet for the exterior walls were very common.

The prefabs were intended to last for about 10 years until more "conventional" housing could be built, but many of them are still around today, much loved by their residents.

http://aghs.virtualbrum.co.uk/agww2/prefabs.htm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/southeast/sites/newport/pages/article_prefabs.shtml

http://www.localhistory.scit.wlv.ac.uk/interesting/prefabs/prefabs.htm



[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 07-05-2006).]

Few Swedes can afford to build anything but a prefab (modular home). There are some fairly large areas of identical wooden boxes, built in the 1970's. The Levittown houses look like an architect's dream in comparison. There are homes worse than this but I find no pictures.

[This message has been edited by C-H (edited 07-10-2006).]