.
The pictures themselves come through Charles Tekula, Jr.. "Joanne was born in 1949 and I was born in 1951... we can only guess at the exact dates of the photos by our ages. Going through them, we just noticed the newspaper headline on the floor..." Some of the pictures have distinguishable dates on the sides-- they are square-format pictures that are usually dated from 1959.
He writes of this picture,
This is my aunt, the photographer. She really was one. She had worked as the photo girl at the Copa Cabana, and Mom has some great shots of Frank Sinatra singing with Desi Arnez, and the like. Looking north on Bloomindale.
Photo courtesy Charles Tekula, Jr. What was natural for Charles Tekula and his family seems striking to us; we see the raw newness
of the suburb in the ungrassed dirt at her feet and date the picture by the split-windshield car, but
we also note that she wears slacks, had a job in the city, lived in the multiple universes of high
celebrity and everyday suburban life. To her, perhaps, it was Levittown that seemed exotic, and
the Copa was everyday. Behind her we can see the asymmetrical arrangement of houses that
belies our picture of the cookie-cutter community where men went into the wrong houses in the
confusion. Levitt's breakup of the streets into complex curves and intersections made this
seeming diversity possible while still keeping building costs extremely low-- far lower than at
other suburban communities.
The Levittown house had a number of variations. After the initial, very traditionally "Cape Cod" version, Levitt began to make modifications that rendered it more "modern" and also introduced planned obsolescence to the housing market. (In fact, Life magazine had a special piece on a family that traded up to each new model as it came out-- an unusual event only in the consistency of the obsession. The Tekula's was this innovative Cape, with its slightly larger windows. Of this particular picture, Charles, Jr. writes that this was a picture of "Dad in front of your Basic Levitt Cape. Notice the built-in kitchen vent/fan. It turned on when you let out the cover with a chain from the inside."
Notice also the unsodded lawn, which Charles, Sr. had just finished seeding (the probable occasion for the picture, and the reason for his boots), and the small shrub-like trees. Viewers unused to the Levittown house might easily mistake this to be the back of the house, because the windows were small, high, and relatively few. The traditional suburban "picture window" is missing from the front-- but it is there: in the back.
This view of the back of the house, made, probably, around 1955-1956, shows one of Levitt's marvelous innovations-- the addition of the picture window at the back of the house, where it looked out onto the common ground shared by numerous houses. It was open land because Levitt required it. There was a covenant forbidding fencing, and the result was something very close to the common "green" of the New England village. Here we see it complete with the inflatable pool and, behind it, the pressed-metal lawn chairs that graced many Levittown backyards. We note as well that the grass came all the way up to the house-- there was no concrete or brick "patio" (yet), and the small shrubs of 1951 have begun to grow. Charles, Jr. recalls the vernacular for the back of the house was the "wall of windows," and notes that he, and his family, "lost count of how many I broke." Architects also note the use of windows at the top that opened out to provide ventilation.
The common space which began at the edge of the picture window and extended back to the opposite neighbor's, had a strange quality of variable ownership and variable privacy. It belonged to the democracy of children and dogs. Because so many families bought their Levittown houses as young adults, the neighborhoods tended to be populated by roving gangs of very young children, and these children required a new form of flexible supervision, somewhere between the urban working-class tradition of mothers and grandmothers on the stoops of the flats, and the more upscale tendencies to direct children into supervised play and activity. In Levittown, mothers could stand at their windows and watch their children-- the window's weren't designed to show the street or to display the house to the passerby, but to enable a fluid relationship between outside and in.
This is part of what made tolerable the relatively tiny Levittown Cape Cod or its equivalently small Ranch and their offshoots-- in the temperate months, children and their parents shared common space and commonality across the greensward behind.
And this was not a small space.
That's me on the huge hill we had behind our house. Looking north at the backs of homes on Stonecutter Road-- Charles Tekula, Jr.
Tekula was born in 1951, and here he is probably 2 years old. It is 1953, and the small trees at the backs of the houses have already taken to the site and are promising to grow into the huge, arching shade trees that they are today. In this picture, though, we are treated to the chance to see the space from a two-year-old's point of view, and it is a huge hill. The open common land between the rows of houses ran for a full suburban block, sometimes more, when the areas added up oddly as a result of the subdivision.
Over time, most of the backyard areas began the process of differentiation-- the areas between ownership and common land became clearer. In the Tekulas' case, we can see the flagstone patio behind the house, complete with the ubiquitous landscaping tools that seemed to lean against one wall or another of every Levittown house.
My Sister, the Landscaper, Charles Tekula, Jr. titles this picture.
Like many of us who grew up in postwar American suburbs, Levittown children imitated their
parents as they planted trees and flowers and tended lawns. In Levittown, this was one of the
most important and time-consuming leisure-time rituals, both because Levitt left so much for
homeowners to do (most Levittown houses came surrounded by mud and little else), and because
this was an important common ritual that bonded families that were, in other ways, often very
different.
Looking south to houses on Bloomingdale Rd. You know how big those trees are now.
Charles Tekula, Jr.
Often the trees planted weren't the five or six-foot high saplings, too expensive for returning GIs on a budget, but the smallest. Families watered and fertilized and nursed their little trees with the same concentration they devoted to their children.
That's the house behind ours. It's on the northeast corner of Stonecutter and Gleaner.
Charles Tekula, Jr.
The commonality of the new community wasn't just forced upon Levittowners by Levitt's covenant against fences. It shows itself as well in the locations where families chose to have their ceremonies take place-- often in the side and even front yards, where rituals could be both public and private, drawing something from the urban public spaces from which the new residents had left, while inventing a new form of communitarianism.
"My sister's birthday. Looking south across Gleaner Lane. I just now noticed that house in the background. That's the "colored farm"....Before I was old enough to remember it, it was mysteriously destroyed by fire while the Black family was at church one night..." Charles Tekula, Jr.
Looking East Down Gleaner Lane, across Bloomingdale Road.
Charles Tekula, Jr.
Levittown wasn't just public space. It was also the private space of the interiors. Soon after moving in, the Tekulas had someone, probably Charles's aunt the photographer, take a picture of the family in the living room. It was 1950, and Charles's mother was pregnant with him.
On the floor, tiled to maximize the heat from the radiant pipes around which the slab had been poured, is the announcement that Truman will not run again for President.
Nine years later, Charles's aunt again took a photograph of the family. Joanne was now eleven, or nearly so..
On a typical Easter Sunday. Notice the built-in t.v. and hi-fi.
Charles Tekula, Jr.
Minutes later, Joanne had a close-up, resulting in "a better shot of the forerunner of today's entertainment center," Charles points out.
Those built-ins were a bargain for Levitt and anything but bargains for the purchasers, who paid
for the appliances over thirty years as part of their mortgages. But they loved them, and Levitt
understood that his innovation lay in thinking of the television not as an eccentric contraption but
as an essential, a built-in, part of the new postwar American home.
The Tekula's was not a typical Levittown story, because no story is typical. But their pictures give us a richly rewarding vision of a moment in postwar America, and for that, we must thank the generosity of the family willling to share with us.
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