Levittown translates Fordian industrialism to the homeplace: “The formula for Island Trees, soon renamed Levittown, was simple. After bulldozing the land and removing the trees, trucks carefully dropped off building materials at precise 60-foot intervals. Each house was built on a concrete slab (no cellar); the floors were of asphalt and the walls of composition rock-board. Plywood replaced 3/4-inch strip lap, 3/4-inch double lap was changed to 3/8-inch for roofing, and the horse and scoop were replaced by the bulldozer. New power tools like saws, routers, and nailers helped increase worker productivity. Freight cars loaded with lumber went directly into a cutting yard where one man cut parts for ten houses in one day. / The construction process itself was divided into twenty-seven distinct steps--beginning with laying the foundation and ending with a clean sweep of the new home. Crews were trained to do one job--one day the white-paint men, then the red-paint men, then the tile layers...the Levitts defied unions and union work rules...and insisted that subcontractors work only for them. Vertical integration also meant that the firm made its own concrete, grew its own timber, and cut its own lumber. It also bought all appliances from wholly owned subsidiaries.” (234-35)

(Jackson, Kenneth T. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Print.)