Document L
All history can show no more portentous economic phenomenon than today’s American
market. . . . It is enabling Americans to raise their standard of living every year while
other countries have trouble maintaining theirs.
The most important change of the past few years . . . is the rise of the great mass into a
new moneyed middle class. . . . It is like no other middle class in history. . . . [they] buy
the same things – the same staples, the same appliances, the same cars, the same
furniture, and much the same recreation. The marketer who designs for his product to
appeal to the whole group has hit the new mass market.
“The Changing American Market” Fortune, 1955
Document M
New Suburbia is something else again. Around every major city from the Atlantic to the
Pacific the new suburbs have been springing up like mushrooms in a damp season. They
are sometimes created by dividing large estates—as on Long Island, in Westchester
County and in areas around Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angeles. More often the new
suburbs are built on what had been until recently empty acreage. Whether in California
or New Jersey they are typically "prefabricated" in all their details and the parts are
suddenly assembled on the spot. Unlike towns and cities and the suburbs of the past,
they do not evolve gradually but emerge full–blown. They are designed and constructed
by corporations or real estate operators who work on mass–production principles. A
hundred or a thousand houses open their doors almost simultaneously, ready for
occupancy.
Sidonie M. Gruenberg, "Homogenized Children of New Suburbia," newspaper article, 1954.
Document N
Levittown Cartoon
Document O
Levittown Advertisement, 1956
Document P
"Little Boxes," Malvina Reynolds, 1962.
Background information: The folk-song movement in America grew after World War II, and in this song,
Malvina Reynolds critiques the American way of life in the 1950s.
Little Boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky tacky,
Little Boxes on the hillside, little boxes all the same,
There's a green one and a pink one, and a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.
And the people in the houses all went to the university,
Where they were put into boxes and they all came out the same,
And there's doctors and lawyers, and business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.
And they all play on the golf course and drink their martini dry,
And they all have pretty children and the children go to school
And the children go to summer camp and then to the university,
Where they are all put in boxes and they all come out the same.
Document Z