William Levitt
American real-estate developer widely credited as the father of modern American suburbia
William Jaird Levitt (February 11, 1907 – January 28, 1994) was an American real-estate developer and housing pioneer. As president of Levitt & Sons, he is widely credited as the father of modern American suburbia. In 1998 he was named one of Time Magazine's "100 Most Influential People of the 20th Century."
Early life and education
Levitt was born in 1907 to a Jewish family in Brooklyn. His generation was the second since emigrating from Russia and Austria; the paternal grandparents who immigrated to the United States had been a rabbi grandfather from Russia and a grandmother from Austria-Hungary. His father was Abraham Levitt, a Brooklyn-born real estate attorney and part-time investor; his mother was Pauline Biederman. A younger brother, Alfred, was born when William was five years old. William received a public school education at Public School 44 and Boys High School. He then attended New York University for three years, but dropped out before graduating.
Levitt & Sons
1920s–1930s
In 1929, William's father Abraham founded a real-estate development company called Levitt & Sons. Levitt & Sons built mostly upscale housing on and around Long Island, New York, in the 1930s.
“William Levitt” enters the record as american real-estate developer widely credited as the father of modern American suburbia. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what William, Levitt and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q305645. VIAF identifies the subject as 53687885. The Library of Congress control number is no00004292. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1907, 1994, 1998 and 1929.
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This entry incorporates text from “William Levitt” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.