Homeowners Guide by Elsi Vassdal Ellis

The suburbs have been the object of much examination and criticism, most of it culturally condescending, portraying the suburb and the suburbanite as the epitome of "crass commercial culture and the death of sophisticated, high-brow civilized living." The suburbs inspired many doctoral dissertations, academic presentations, papers, and books by assistant professors in their pursuit of tenure. The suburbs also became the focus of novelists and feminists who made them the scapegoats for all the ills of society. A low resolution online Levittown Homeowner's Guide inspired my examination of the first mid-century Levittown on Long Island. That exploration led to the discovery that it wasn't the first suburb on the island. Those wealthy robber barons were the first to move out of the city to establish a low-density suburb on prime real estate at the turn of the century. The similarities and differences of the two suburban communities are compared in this altered and enhanced guide.