Levitt, William J.

Levitt, William J. (Jaird) (1907–94) builder; born in New York City. He was educated at New York University. With his brother and father he formed Levitt and Sons (1929), a construction company, himself serving as president and managing the business operations as it successfully built nearly 3,000 houses in its first 11 years. The firm built mass-produced housing for the U.S. Navy during World War II and found a successful civilian adaptation in Levittown, Long Island, N.Y., where he built 17,500 small but equipped, landscaped, and affordable houses and associated public and community buildings (1947–51). A second Levittown in Bucks County, Pa., followed. He called his firm "the General Motors of the housing industry." He attracted controversy for racially discriminatory sales policies (upheld by the Pennsylvania courts, 1955). He sold the company to International Telephone and Telegraph in 1968. His later career was marred by failures in foreign projects in the 1970s, and in the 1980s, by three disastrous Levittown-like Florida projects and accusations of misappropriation of funds.