Levittown, Pa.

As the world's biggest homebuilder, Long Island's Bill Levitt has been hard hit by the squeeze of credit restrictions and materials shortages. He had to cut his 1951 output of low-priced houses to 2,500, compared to 5,333 last year, and abandon altogether his "Landia" project for 1,750 homes in the $13,000 class. To get started again at the pace he and his brother Al need for their cost-cutting methods, Bill Levitt has been roaming the U.S. looking for a big, new site in a critical defense area. Last week he announced that he had found one in the southern part of Bucks

County, Pa.,* midway between the site of United States Steel's $400 million Fairless Works and the Kaiser Metal Products plant on the Delaware River. There the Levitts will build Levittown, Pa., a 16,000-home community second only in size to their Long Island Levittown's 17,546 houses.

Bill & Al should have no trouble finding customers for their houses. By the time U.S. Steel and Kaiser have their plants running, 14,500 workers alone will have moved into the area, whose total population is expected to grow by at least 32,000. If the Bucks County site is declared a critical defense area, as Bill Levitt is confident it will be, he will get priorities on scarce materials, and credit restrictions will be lifted since the houses will sell for less than $12,000. The Levitts have bought 2,500 acres (average price: $1,100 an acre). They will break ground for Levittown, Pa. in two months, and will put up a complete community from scratch with the usual Levitt trademarks: swimming pools, a town hall, athletic fields, parks, playgrounds, schools and shopping centers.

The Levitts are switching from the kind of house they built on Long Island to three-bedroom, ranch-type homes, with 1,070 sq. ft. of floor space v. 800 in the Long Island homes. They will have wood-burning fireplaces that open onto three rooms, radiant heating, picture windows, sliding panels that make it easy to enlarge the living room, electric ranges, refrigerators, washing machines.

*Famed heretofore for its barns replete with hex signs and as a summer home for such Broadway wits & wights as George S. Kaufman, Oscar Hammerstein 2nd, Dorothy Parker, Moss Hart.

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