SUBURBAN ENNUI TOO BLESSED TO BE DEPRESSED
Nina Koscica Advised by Gesa Büttner Dias & Medina Lasansky B.Arch Thesis May 2021
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DEDICATED TO: ANNA & OTTO
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INDEX PAGE
CHAPTER
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ACT 1 - Origins of Place Scene 1 - Toxicity & Incarcerated Space Scene 2 - Pop cultural Imaginary Scene 3 - Democratic Symbolism Scene 4 - The Commons The Status Quo
54 59 76 82 98
ACT 2 - Propositions in Suburbanism Scene 1 - POPS Scene 2 - Pedestrian Priority Scene 3 - Ecological Corridor Scene 4 - Attic as Unfinished Business
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ACT 1 ORIGINS OF PLACE ANYWHERE, U.S.A
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Always somewhere between utopia and dystopia, suburbia has occupied the American cultural mythology for over 80 years…here a reactionary tale unfolds tracing the origins of an experimental sandbox for American ingenuity and cultural identity, whose influence has had legendary side effects on the way we live and consume. This theory of place considers why a development once symbolic of American opportunity and innovation has now come to symbolize homogenous banality, a landscape infamously diagnosed with Ennui, which according to the Oxford English dictionary can be defined as,“a feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement.”
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SCENE 1 TOXICITY & INCARCERATED SPACE HANFORD, WASHINGTON, U.S.A
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Our story begins in 1942the Manhattan Project had just reserved a site in Eastern Washington State for the top secret manufacturing of plutonium hidden within desiccated farmlands of the American desert. A manifestation of the modern militaryindustrial complex, The Hanford Nuclear Reservation required mass mobilization of labor at the hand of the US federal government.
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Left: Image N1D0069267, photograph (Hanford, WA, n.d.), Us Department of Energy. Right: War Construction in the Desert, Edited Version, circa 1945 (Finding Aids Archival Collections at Hagely Museum & Library)
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An initial strategy to house them failed, due to militaristic utilitarian barrack style living spaces which drove away costly masses of recruits, not only depleting federal funding but also leaking precious classified information. The solution was to simulate a living environment sheltered from the knowledge of nuclear toxicity and heavy government surveillance, one packed with creature comforts normally enjoyed only by the white collar class, but for blue collar employees. That place was Richland, a company town coined Plutopia by the environmental historian Kate Brown. A utopia satiating second thoughts about a dystopic landscape, one plagued with toxic work environments, systemic discrimination, and the violent repercussions of civilian labor. Richland mastered the art of instrumentalizing appeasement as a way to secure individuals from fleeing an orchestrated system, promising spacey properties, social security, and a level of affluence not experienced before by the blue collar target audience. At the crossroads between a company town and government funded housing, this Plutopia seemed like a paradoxically socialist development, yet one that inundated its inhabitants with capitalist consumer comforts. This urban planning model ultimately inspired what would become Long Island’s famous first suburb, Levittown.
Left: Hanford Engineer Works, Alphabet House Floor Plans, n.d., photograph, n.d., Hanford History Project, Washington State University Tri-Cities.
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...They focused not on building for a community but on building for individuals as loyal and valuable employees to the corporation, as consumers, and also as object of security, safety, and surveillance. Kate Brown, “The City Plutonium Built,” in Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 43.
Top: Robley L Johnson, Richland Village, n.d., photograph, n.d., richlandbombers.com. Bottom: Ed Westcott, #15, photograph (Milwaukee, Wisconsin, n.d.), US Department of Energy. Billboards such as this one were often featured within company towns serving top-secret manufacturing sites during WWII
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SCENE 2 POP CULTURAL IMAGINARY POST WAR, U.S.A
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The post war cultural landscape then came to be, one possessed with the relentlessness of reinvention, in the foreground of looming anxieties triggered by political and economic landscapes. Science fiction narratives fluctuate from utopias to dystopias, oriented by economic boom or bust, distrust of surveilling government institutions and authoritarian regimes. From the post war housing shortage that triggered the demand for Levittown itself, to the advent of wasteful consumer and automobile culture juxtaposed with environmental activism and climate awareness, to the democratization of top down manipulation of information technologies. The stories told here-- from Bikini Atoll and I Love Lucy to a post 9/11 virtual world of tweets and Sims and the Shadow of Chernobyl-- propose an America caught in an ongoing cultural crisis concerning its place on the world stage as a model civilization granded natural wealth and unique national privilege. This crisis, catalyzed by the atomic age and its responsibilities, brought veering responses-- between isolationism and global engagement, between triumphalism and self loathing, between utopianism and dread.
Peter B. Hales, “Introduction,” in Outside the Gates of Eden: the Dream of America from Hiroshima to Now (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017), p. 4. 17
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1980 FALL OF SOVIET UNION 1981-1989 REAGAN
SCIENCE FICTION BECOMES MORE WHOLISTICALLY DYSTOPIC
1976 SIGNS OF LIFE EXHIBITION 1977-1981 CARTER 1980S HOME COMPUTERS & CELL PHONES POPULARIZED
1974-1977 FORD
1953-1961 EISNHOWER 1953 FAHRENHEIT 451 RAY BRADBURY 1954-1968 CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT 1954 BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION 1955-1975 SPACE RACE 1955-1975 VIETNAM WAR 1956 NATIONAL INTERSTATE & DEFENSE HIGHWAYS ACT 1961-1963 JFK 1961 BAY OF PIGS 1962 SILENT SPRING RACHEL CARSON 1963 THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE 1963-1969 LBJ 1965 INVASION OF GRENADA 1965 WATTS RIOTS 1968 2001 SPACE ODYSSEY 1969-1974 NIXON 1969 STONEWALL RIOTS 1969 MOON LANDING 1970 FIRST EARTH DAY
SETTLEMENT IN THE WORLD
1950-1953 KOREAN WAR 1951 LEVITTOWN BECOMES LARGEST DETATCHED HOUSING
DAWN OF CONSUMER CULTURE & MASS PRODUCTION SCI-FI IDOLIZES CAPITALISM & PROGRESS
1941 PERAL HARBOR 1941-1942 WWII 1942 ELECTRICITY SENT TO HANFORDSITE 1943 HANFORD CAMP SET UP 1944 PROMISE TO DELIVER PLUTONIUM 1945-1953 TRUMAN 1945 HIROSHIMA & NAGASAKI BOMBED 1945 HANFORD CAMP DECOMMISSIONED 1946 POST WAR HOUSING SHORTAGE 1947 MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET 1947-1991 COLD WAR 1949 1984 BY GEORGE ORWELL 1950S TELEVISION & PLASTICS POPULARIZED
1933-1945 FDR 1933 GRAND COULEE DAM
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2019 THE UNINHABITABLE EARTH DAVID WALLACE WELLS 2019-PRESENT SYRIA 2020-PRESENT CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC 2020-PRESENT BLACK LIVES MATTER MOVEMENT 2020-PRESENT ZOOM POPULARIZED 2021-PRESENT BIDEN 2021 CAPITAL BUILDING STORMED
2011 LIBYA 2012-2019 WAR WITH ISIL 2015 GAY MARRAIGE LEGALIZED 2017-21 TRUMP
2008 HOUSIN MARKET CRASHES 2009-2017 OBAMA 2010S SOCIAL MEDIA TAKES OVER
2001-PRESENT AFGANISTAN OCCUPATION 2003-2010 IRAQ WAR
2001 SEPTEMBER 11TH , WAR ON TERROR BEGINS
DOMESTIC LIFE
2000S GPS BECOMES POPULAR 2000-2021 SIMS : A SATRIRICAL POKE AT AMERICAN
1997-2018 FALLOUT GAMES : A REIMAGINATION OF COLD WAR FANTASIES
1991 INTERNET GOES PUBLIC 1993-2001 CLINTON 1994 AMAZON FOUNDED
SCI FI WONDERS ABOUT NETWORKS , DEMOCRATIZATION & SURVEILLANCE
1989-1993 GEORGE HW BUSH 1989 PANAMA INVASION 1990S DIGITAL AGE BEGINS
1986 DECLASSIFICATION OF HANFORD DOCUMENTS
1984 VENTURI KNOLL COLLECTION
SCENE 3 DEMOCRATIC SYMBOLISM LEVITTOWN, U.S.A
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A poster child for post war planned communities, American ingenuity, capitalism, and democracy, the optics and sentiments behind levittown are as old as America itself. Longing for a nostalgic sense of colonial community, the first levittowners indeed colonized the sparse potato fields that once stretched across the long island landscape.
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A sort of manifest destiny, where every settler may lay claim to their own individual American Dream in a rugged uncharted territory, at a discount of course.
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It was a solution to the unobtainable suburbs of Long Island’s North Shore where Manhattan’s elite spend their wealth, a place sprinkled with Gatsby mansion iconography within the pop cultural imaginary.
Cast, John. “American Progress.” Manifest Destiny 11 1/2 in x 15 3/4 in. (29.2 cm x 40 cm). United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs division, 1872. Autry Museum of the American West.
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Also a solution to cramped urban housing conditions, a way to carve out space for the middle class.
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Thus resulting in a landscape of new rugged settlers, not entirely alone, united by a collective sense that they were a part of something bigger than themselves, something that had never been done before.
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SCENE 4 THE COMMONS
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...yet not too collective, true to American individualism assuring that,
No man that owns his own house and lot can be a communist. He has too much to do. -William Levitt ...yet collective enough, because a sweeping landscape was generated that possessed the spectre of the commons.
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Levitt forbade fences and hedgerows used to demarcate property lines, so that buyers couldn’t make out how small their lot dimensions were. In this space [between houses] children charged, out the back doors...The New England village never had the fluid commonality of Levittown’s backyards...For some, this new freedom, this socialism of children and dogs, was too much, and warranted complaints and calls for fences, however a majority of Levittowners, children and their parents, disagreed.
Peter B. Hales, “Chapter 4 Looking at Levittown,” in Outside the Gates of Eden: the Dream of America from Hiroshima to Now (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017), p. 85. 28
Where a socialist utopia was again created by accident, via capitalist means, Levittown forbade fences as to make property dimensions seem larger, leading to a “socialism of children and dogs” fluid between property demarcations. A paradox was also created where the small modular homes which signified a cramped individualism that erupted into an exploded communitarianism. Levittown became not just a neighborhood, but a tight knit extended family of communal child rearing.
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THE PICTURE WINDOW The Picture Window
Picture Window
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The lack of fences created sweeping vistas across yards, blurring the lines between properties, only to be emphasized by backyard picture windows that brought the commons into the living room. This fenceless condition manifested in the architecture of the homes as newer models were upgraded to meet the demands of growing families. For instance, in the first cape cod model communal living spaces were oriented toward the street and then in the later 1949 Ranch Model, the plan was simply flipped 90 degrees... this in turn introducing the picture window condition, an example of landscape urbanism and economic demand influencing architectural features.
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Yard
Street
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Since the location of the living room and largest window moved from front to back, the view moved towards the intimate, informal, neighborly, communitarian space of the open backyards, the common area, rather than the sidewalk and street, the formal and efficient areas where the car is parked to take you to work and where the school bus came….Rather than watch the kids from the kitchen, you watched from the living from-- from space of leisure rather than labor. The picture window didn’t exaggerate the crowded homogeneity of these suburban communities. Instead, it celebrated their expansion of scale: backyards that flowed with picturesque indeterminacy from what you owned, what was yours, to what was common.
Peter B. Hales, “Chapter 4 Looking at Levittown,” in Outside the Gates of Eden: the Dream of America from Hiroshima to Now (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017), p. 99, 102. 33
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Yard
Street
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However in an individualistic culture of consumption where land is reduced to a commodity, relentless property subdivision was on its way and the illusion of the commons did not last forever. A sea of fences were erected in the spirit of a Robert Frost quote taken out of context turned conservative maxim, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’ Or do they?
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The Fences Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun; And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not one stone on a stone, But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, No one has seen them made or heard them made, But at spring mending-time we find them there. I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to walk the line And set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go. To each the boulders that have fallen to each. And some are loaves and some so nearly balls We have to use a spell to make them balance: ‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’ We wear our fingers rough with handling them. Oh, just another kind of out-door game, One on a side. It comes to little more: There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’ Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: ‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offense. Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him, But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather He said it for himself. I see him there Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. He moves in darkness as it seems to me, Not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father’s saying, And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Robert Frost, Mending Wall 37
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The aging suburb has since experienced a narrative of loss, lapsing from its youthful energy and promise. The Suburbia now faces a demographic quagmire amid new cultural and economic forces, leading to an exodus of an age group necessary to its survival - young adults who never return from college for long, among other shifting trends affecting Levittown’s new generation. In the following pages are several excerpts from the NextLI Survey, powered by the local Long Island publication Newsday completed in 2019 which reveals how market forces, social mobility and demographics have manifested in the domestic lives of Long Island’s new generation to find out their future prospects and whether or not they will chose to return to the place they grew up.
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Population Trends
Next LI Survey, “Next LI Powered by Newsday,” Next LI powered by Newsday (Newsday, May 2019), https://next.newsday.com/research/survey-the-next-generation-of-long-islanders/.
Generated via US Census Data
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Next LI Survey, “Next LI Powered by Newsday,” Next LI powered by Newsday (Newsday, May 2019), https://next.newsday.com/research/survey-the-next-generation-of-long-islanders/.
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Why won’t they return?
Next LI Survey, “Next LI Powered by Newsday,” Next LI powered by Newsday (Newsday, May 2019), https://next.newsday.com/research/survey-the-next-generation-of-long-islanders/.
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Housing Changes to municipal housing policies, mostly through rezoning, are popular among everyone surveyed – all races and ethnicities, education levels, incomes and residents of both counties. Given that more than 2 in 3 Long Islanders in this age group report either renting or living in the home of a relative, most in singlefamily homes, this finding is not surprising. There is wide support for more variety in housing stock among an age group that says it wants to be more engaged in public policy. This is especially true among non-Whites and those with a high school education. Generally, those with lower incomes have the strongest desire for housing options that would be less expensive than a single-family home.
While all groups want more housing options, non-White respondents and Nassau County residents are more supportive of the construction of housing stock they can afford in more affluent neighborhoods. The neighborhoods this generation wants are those found in many downtowns. Most want to live in places that support small businesses and independent stores, and ones that are close to a vibrant and pedestrian-friendly business district, train or bus stop.
Next LI Survey, “Next LI Powered by Newsday,” Next LI powered by Newsday (Newsday, May 2019), https://next.newsday.com/ research/survey-the-next-generation-of-long-islanders/.
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There is one thing that Long Island’s young adults agree on no matter what their backgrounds: Long Island’s parks, beaches and outdoor attractions are what they most love about life here and are primarily what keeps them here. Other high-scoring reasons to stay are access to education and shopping. Their biggest gripe with Long Island is taxes across the board, even for those who rent or live with relatives.
Race determined other concerns about the region. White residents in this age group worry about the cost of living, while Asians say crime/violence is a big concern. Black young adults have a hard time with access to jobs, while Hispanics struggle overall with the cost of living. This generation also has strong opinions on housing, diversity, community involvement and transportation.
Next LI Survey, “Next LI Powered by Newsday,” Next LI powered by Newsday (Newsday, May 2019), https://next.newsday.com/ research/survey-the-next-generation-of-long-islanders/.
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Where do the region’s 18- to 34-year-olds live? For more than 1 in 3 of them, it’s in the home of a parent or a relative, with 35 percent reporting such arrangements.
Black and Asian residents are the most likely to live with a relative, as well as those who live in Nassau County. 64 percent live in singlefamily homes, 17 percent in apartments, and 10 percent live in apartments within a single-family home.
67% Plan to move away from LI for more affordable housing. Even though many of those surveyed have been here for most of their lives, costs are driving some away. Eight out of 10 in this age group know someone who has moved away, and report it is most often because it’s “too expensive” here.
55% Plan to purchase a home within the next 5 years 44% Of the above plan to purchase a home on LI
Next LI Survey, “Next LI Powered by Newsday,” Next LI powered by Newsday (Newsday, May 2019), https://next.newsday.com/ research/survey-the-next-generation-of-long-islanders/.
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WHAT’S IMPORTANT? 88%
Living in a place that supports small business and independent stores
87%
Living within a short commute of a train station or bus stop
85%
Living close to a vibrant and pedestrian-friendly downtown
84%
Living in a place where you do not have to rely on a car to get around
82%
Racial and ethnic diversity in your neighborhood
79%
Access to a renewable energy source such as solar or wind to power your home
75%
Access to farm-to-table restaurants/locally sourced food
74%
Living in a place that is known for being artistic and creative
Next LI Survey, “Next LI Powered by Newsday,” Next LI powered by Newsday (Newsday, May 2019), https://next.newsday.com/ research/survey-the-next-generation-of-long-islanders/.
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Transportation
Next LI Survey, “Next LI Powered by Newsday,” Next LI powered by Newsday (Newsday, May 2019), https://next.newsday.com/ research/survey-the-next-generation-of-long-islanders/.
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Diversity
Next LI Survey, “Next LI Powered by Newsday,” Next LI powered by Newsday (Newsday, May 2019), https://next.newsday.com/ research/survey-the-next-generation-of-long-islanders/.
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A majority value living in communities with different racial and ethnic groups.
When asked about their ideal neigh-borhood racial breakdown, more than 30 percent responded that race didn’t matter. White and higher-income residents reported more daily interactions with persons of other races or ethnicities more often than the other groups surveyed, even though non-White respondents said their neighborhoods were more diverse. Hispanic and Asian respondents said they feel the most prepared for a multicultural world because of their K-12 education. Overall, 82 percent were positive about growing diversity.
Next LI Survey, “Next LI Powered by Newsday,” Next LI powered by Newsday (Newsday, May 2019), https://next.newsday.com/ research/survey-the-next-generation-of-long-islanders/.
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The Future: will they stay or will they come back? It’s a common story: The kids leave for college and don’t come back. But why? To find out, we surveyed 18- to 34-year-olds who were born on Long Island but currently live in the five New York City boroughs. It turns out this group isn’t fed up with the suburbs that spawned them; it’s quite the opposite. They actually hold more favorable views about Long Island when compared with Long Islanders in this age group who live here, consistently answering more positively.
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When faced with the question whether to leave or not, both my wife and I chose to raise our daughter on Long Island. However, what used to be a simple decision has become more complex in recent years as disparate economic, social,and environmental pressures increasingly mount. -Richard Murdocco, 32, Commack
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ACT 2 PROPOSITIONS IN SUBURBANISM
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Certain urbanist propositions may save suburbia from its imminent fall from grace Several proposal scenarios are generated via linking tactics of urbanism to domestic elements which have captured the imaginations of generations of Levittowners, elements that children have historically appropriated to play out fantastical realities in:
the Attic / Yard / Sump / Street / & Block These linkages together address psycho spatial issues such as: the exodus of a new generation, lack of entertainment amenities, unaffordability, repercussions of historic segregation / displacement, individualist territoriality, and environmental degradation.
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PSYCHOSPATIAL ISSUE ADDRESSED
Lack of Ammenities
ENVIRONMENTAL ELEMENT Attic Fence
Yard Sump Street Blob
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Exodus of New Generation
Unaffordability
Segregation / Displacement
Terrioriality
Flora & Fauna
Environmental Degredation
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Car Culture
PROPOSAL TACTIC
Multifamily Home Allowance
Fluidity between yards
Ecological Corridor
Pedestrian Walkways Allowance of Local Buisnesses
POPS: Privately Owned Public Spaces Hyperpersonalized Living Clusters
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SCENE 1 P.O.P.S. PRIVATELY OWNED PUBLIC SPACES PRIVATELY OWNED PUBLIC SPACES
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Amenities are currently located along an isolated commercial strip, and are almost completely absent from the fabric otherwise, where the only common public spaces are really dedicated to or appropriated by children, such as the streets, playgrounds, and schools. 60
Yet what if the fabric were inundated with common spaces, turning the suburb into a heterogenous town, allowing for a proliferation of decentralized amenities. In a A SUBVERSIVE BUSINESS PLAN this scenario is played out... 61
A SUBVERSIVE BUSINESS PLAN Taking advantage of the current symptoms of ennui and decreasing population, a subversive developer comes in and starts to buy up properties. Their long term plan is to propose an adaptive reuse of the sprawl’s mosaic that cultivates a post-internet pop culture where personalization as a commodity— and lifestyle— acts as a draw reversing the exodus of suburban descendants and potential newcomers.
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Removing the fences once more to generate large shared park spaces within the living clusters, mixing affordable homes within the new desensified housing typology. While each plot remains the private property of legal family entities, the properties on the block merge together, where land is only conceptually divided by law, rather than law and fences.
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Rem Koolhaas, Madelon Vriesendorp The City of the Captive Globe Project, New York, New York, Axonometric 1972 70
When we look at manhattan, we encounter a conceptually INFINITE UNIFORM grid, a tabula rasa for a multitude of worlds to grow in the system. However when we look at suburbia, the opposite is the case, where a CLOSED ONE OFF mosaic of unique blobular blocks that occupy the same program throughout. This strategy asks what if the town mosaic comes to programmatically and characteristically become as unique as it is formally?
A highly curated consumer housing experience, rooted in mass customization, chock full of accidentally sustainable pastimes catering to all passions and earthly delights. Where instead of fences separating architecture, the architecture becomes a sort of inhabitable fence, demarcating the extents of an assemblage of privately owned public spaces, in the spirit of communitarianism, but catering to a culture obsessed with personalization and identity.
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SCENE 2 PEDESTRIAN PRIORITY
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Rather than following the grid, he imposed a complex combination of parallel streets, cul de sacs, curved sets of 2 and 3 corner cutting streets, and dead ends. Once amenities are decentralized and proliferated, Levittowners will bleed out into the streets once more, bringing life back to the townscape. This next strategy prepares for that condition. The current streetscape maze, whose design intended to filter car traffic, slow it down & make drivers attentive, in the first place enabled children to play in them more safely. At the same time the maze-like geometry of the suburban fabric in combination with large, impenetrable blocks makes walking to a close destination an inefficient activity and coaxes inhabitants to drive in order to cut down on travel time.
Peter B. Hales, “Chapter 4 Looking at Levittown,” in Outside the Gates of Eden: the Dream of America 77 from Hiroshima to Now (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017), p. 82.
RAISED CROSSWALKS
INTERBLOCK PASSAGEWAYS
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Here a series of raised crosswalks give priority to the walker in the landscape, and inter-block pathways through the clusters generate porosity and shortcuts. This practice has been utilized to create a more striking visual barrier between pedestrians and vehicles, acting as a physical and psychological cue for the driver to slow down. Once greater infrastructures are in place for easy and safe pedestrian life coupled with an incentive to walk to close-by amenities, the reliance on car culture and the environmental degradation that goes with it can be mitigated.
An example of this practice in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Charlie Simpson, Raised Crosswalk into a Neighborhood Slow Zone, photograph (Amsterdam, n.d.), Twitter.
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SCENE 3 ECOLOGICAL CORRIDOR
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TOPOGRAPHY
Here each line is but a foot in elevation change, indicating Levittown’s flat topography, sloping down gently toward the ocean to the south. The landscape is consequently speckled with several man-made drainage ditches to retain rainwater and prevent flooding.
Called sumps, these ponds are neglected utility spaces operating in the margins of everyday life experience. A once destination for urban exploration by children on bikes turned polluted trash collectors. 84
SUMPS
The spaces closest to a true commons
for ecological processes and spatial appropriation for play, the sumps have a potential to connect inter-block pathways creating ecological corridors that snake through the privately owned public spaces. The sumps’ potential lies in the mystical sentiment they bring up in the minds of Levittowners, from behind fences on public property provoking feelings of curiosity and fear, to stories of children playing there out of sight to break segregation rules, getting lost in drainpipe networks, and cold war planning to futilely hide below ground in the event of a nuclear fallout live on in nascent memories.
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PATHWAYS AS CONNECTIVE TISSUE
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STORIES OF THE SUMPS The Unthinkable Across the street from the Old Motor, off Skimmer Lane, was my contingency plan in the event my own youthful unthinkable became imminent. As a Levitown youth in the 1970’s, I estimated that I could, climbing over the chicken wire fence that filled the gap in our neighbor’s hedgerow, reach the sump’s subterranean drainpipe in less than three minutes from my parent’s back door; the living room clock ticking off the countdown of the American Dream’s last moments before detonation. A child of the Cold War wondering just which of my neighbors, in this town of basement-less houses, secretly had a fallout shelter. A scheme to survive the apocalypse involving Nassau County storm basin No. 43…. Oftentimes I go by that sump off Skimmer Lane, across from the Old Motor. I ponder what would have been my next step after that blinding sunrise in the western sky washed over suburbia and that little meadow, albeit scorched, spread out before me to the horizon awaiting the return of wildflowers and butterflies. In that other reality, with all the time in the world, I would have thought of something whilst giving chase to painted ladies and monarchs through the undulating foxtails under the cicada shrills reverberating in the humid air; sovereign of all I survey. Paul Manton, Levittown, NY
Paul Manton, “The Unthinkable,” Patch.com, August 21, 2012, https://patch.com/new-york/ levittown-ny/the-unthinkable.
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STORIES OF THE SUMPS Early 1950s Memories of Orchid Road and the Glorious Sump ...According to Jeff Peyton, class of 1961 and my childhood friend, “The sump was even with, or just south of the Old Motor Parkway, a place to my young eyes that was filled with wildflowers and Queen Anne’s Lace, oversized brown locusts, and toads. I loved that place.” I remember one time a whole bunch of us were hiding out around the culverts in the underbrush playing war games in the early evening just as it got dark. My dad sneaked up on us and shouted to wake the dead. I’ve never been so scared in my life. As he took my brother Mitch and me back to our house, I can remember him lecturing us on properly setting up a perimeter to avoid being surprised by the enemy…. I also have wonderful memories of days exploring the forbidden tunnels inside the sump. We weren’t supposed to be in the sump much less going into those tunnels, but it seems that almost everyone did it. I forget just how far I crawled under the streets of Levittown exploring the sewer system, but I believe I got pretty far north. I remember being somewhat frightened about not being able to back track to the sump after making too many twists and turns into and through adjacent underground tunnels. It would have been exceedingly embarrassing to have become hopelessly lost and then ignominiously extricated by town authorities. One more thing comes to mind. I recollect that before the sump was built in the very early 1950s that we had major flooding all along Orchid Road during a heavy rain. I think my dad was out back with other dads doing what they could to stop the water from cascading into our yards and houses. I always thought (incorrectly I’m sure) that the sump was built shortly thereafter because that flooding had occurred. It’s much more likely it was already on the drawing board.
Tim Lavey, class of 1963 Tim Lavey, “Early 1950s Memories of Orchid Road and the Glorious Sump,” Vanderbuilt Cup Races, March 25, 2011, https://www.vanderbiltcupraces.com/blog/article/mystery_friday_foto_68_can_ you_identify_this_motor_parkway_structure.
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Excerpt From Our House: Stories of Levittown, Pam Conrad pp.43-47 Not every town has them. But Levittown does. A sump is just a piece of wild land where the streets drain empty after a rain. So it looks like a nice pond, except when you look close you see it’s fed water by big concrete pipes. The town put a chain-link fence around our sumps long ago. Nobody’s actually al lowed to go in them, but kids around here have always played there, and I don’t )ever remember anyone being sent away. The paths through the hales in the fences are worn smooth, and some of the hales are so wide you can get your dirt bike in for the days when you have races. Sometimes sumps can be pretty polluted looking - a dumping place for old furniture, abandoned car parts, and other garbage. But some can be nice, depending on how people take care of them. I’ll bet some pretty terrific adventures could happen here. Mrs. M. The next important section in my writer’s notebook is called CHARACTERS. These are the people that will be in my stories someday. I love this part. It’s like making up new friends and figuring out exactly what they might be like if you were to meet them. These are some characters I’ve been working on: Timmy. Little white boy about seven years old. He wears old sneakers, T-shirts that are too big for him. He’s got real orange freckles on his face, and he wears a Yankees hat backwards. He really looks up to his older brother and wants to be just like him. Jeremy, why do you say he’s a white boy? Mrs. M. Andy. Timmy’s older brother, about eleven. He’s one of those kids who’s good at everything he does. He’s strong, fast, smart. He can shoot baskets, spit bubbles, and ride his dirt bike faster than anybody. He can also do neat things like catch frogs and make them be still. Spit bubbles!?! Mrs. M
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Tyrone. I want him to be a black kid, and he and Andy are best friends. He’s got a dirt bike, too. But he’s a computer genius at school and always talking about how someday he’s going to invent a computer that would fit in your pocket... Later, when Mrs. Mehlman hadn’t commented on this, I added: Mrs. M., how come you didn’t ask me why I said Tyrone was a black boy and you asked why I said Timmy ‘s a white boy? Good point, Jeremy. I’ll think about that. Mrs. M. Mr. Anderson. Tyrone’s father. He’s a science teacher and whenever he’s with Tyrone and Tyrone’s friends, he tries to teach them stuff, like if they’re out at night, he points out the constellations, or he explains the spin on a basketball and how you can make it work for you. So those are the ingredients that you need to begin a story -a setting, some people to put in the setting, and something you’re kind of worried about or thinking about a lot. I asked Mrs. Mehlman if I can use all these parts with a true experience. She said why not. She told me to see if I could come up with a “what if” for my WHAT IF section. This is what I decided on. And this was true. What if Timmy, Andy, and Tyrone decide to clean up a really polluted sump, and they keep it a secret from their parents because they think they’re not allowed, but when the parents fmd out, they actually join in? Wow, Jeremy. Go for it! Mrs. M. I’ll bet you never realized how much thinking and preparation go into a story, did you? Well, now that I’ve done some of this think work, I’m ready to start my story in my MANUSCRIPT IN PROGRESS section. This is what I have so far: It was a hot summer day. Timmy’s hands were wet and full of spring guppies. He was standing knee-deep in the sump by a concrete pipe. He had his sneakers on because of the broken glass. Suddenly his brother called to him from the top of the hill. “Look at this, Timmy! Come here!” Timmy dropped the guppies and scrambled up the hill. Andy showed Timmy what he had in his hands - a frog, one that filled his two cupped hands. And it was struggling to jump away.
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“Watch this,” Andy said. He stepped back and began to whip his arm in big circles, faster and faster, like he was winding up for a pitch, but the frog was in his hand. He stopped suddenly and held it out. The frog was still, his front and back legs limp, all dizzy and stunned. His tongue was hanging out. “Wow!” Timmy said. “That’s the best! I’ll trade you.” And out of his pocket Timmy pulled a small turtle shell. Andy took the shell without a word and held it up to the sun to peer into it. He handed over the stunned frog. Suddenly they heard Tyrone call and saw him coming through the cut in the chain-link fence. “Tyrone, look what Andy did!” Timmy held out the frog to show him, but the frog had regained his senses and from Timmy’s open hand it leaped high in the air and disappeared into the tall grasses. “No fair! No fair!” he started yelling, and he ran after it. “Where’s your bike, Tyrone?” Andy asked. “J thought we were going to race today.” Tyrone frowned and shook his head. “My dad won’t let me bring it here anymore. Too much broken glass,” he said. Andy hated to agree, but it was true. “Yeah. ! I’ve had three flats so far this summer. My mother keeps asking where I’m riding that there’s so much glass.” Andy and Tyrone stood there and looked around at their sump. lt was pretty awful, and dangerous, too. There was an old stuffed chair, an abandoned car chassis, a dead battery, and some busted crates. Not to mention the broken glass that was rough on their tires.
Andy thought it was pretty hopeless and then all of a sudden, Tyrone said, “Hey! Why don’t we clean it up.?”
Pam Conrad and Brian Selznick, “Writer’s Notebook - The 1980’s,” in Our House: the Stories of Levittown (New York: Scholastic, 1995), pp. 43-47. 91
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SCENE 4 ATTIC AS UNFINISHED BUISNESS
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The first home models came with an unfinished attic, with a famed “staircase leading to nowhere” symbolizing the potential for do-it-yourselfers to customize and adapt the home as their family evolved throughout the years. Levittown now faces a need for adaptation and customization at the urban scale with issues of territoriality and the nature of low density single family housing failing to cater to evolving forms of modern American family structures. The current condition is now on the verge of flux.
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CAPE COD
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PROPERTY DIVISION
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The status quo... 104
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THINGS START HAPPENING...
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MULTI FAMILY HOUSING
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If each molecule represents a nuclear family structure as defined by housing code, than each evolution of code variant begins to cater to new forms, ones less governed by the current white heteronormative patriarchal hegemony in place. From the first multi family allowance, to abolishing side yards, increasing height allowance, and expanding the legal definition of what constitutes a family.
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MI TI FA MUL
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A reactionary landscape transformed to meet the demands of shifting popular cultures and economic tides, saying yes in a culture of no proliferating the wonder and curiosity of the children of Levittown as an urbanist manifestation of the future, a town that is too blessed to be depressed.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY War Construction in the Desert, Edited Version, circa 1945. Finding Aids Archival Collections at Hagely Museum & Library. Accessed May 2021. https://findingaids.hagley.org/ repositories/2/archival_objects/31540. Brown, Kate. “The City Plutonium Built.” Essay. In Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters, 43. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Cad, Tedd. Photograph. Richland, WA, 1966. 1953 Phone Book. Cast, John. “American Progress.” Manifest Destiny 11 1/2 in x 15 3/4 in. (29.2 cm x 40 cm). United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs division, 1872. Autry Museum of the American West. Conrad, Pam, and Brian Selznick. “Writer’s Notebook - The 1980’s.” Essay. In Our House: the Stories of Levittown, 43–47. New York: Scholastic, 1995. Frost, Robert. “Mending Wall.” North of Boston, 1914 Hales, Peter B. “Introduction.” Essay. In Outside the Gates of Eden: the Dream of America from Hiroshima to Now, 4. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017. Hanford Engineer Works. Alphabet House Floor Plans. n.d. Photograph. Hanford History Project, Washington State University Tri-Cities. Image N1D0069267. Photograph. Richland, WA, n.d. Us Department of Energy. Johnson, Robley L. Richland Village. n.d. Photograph. richlandbombers.com. Lavey, Tim. “Early 1950s Memories of Orchid Road and the Glorious Sump.” Vanderbuilt Cup Races, March 25, 2011. https://www.vanderbiltcupraces.com/blog/article/mystery_friday_ foto_68_can_you_identify_this_motor_parkway_structure. Manton, Paul. “The Unthinkable.” Patch.com, August 21, 2012. https://patch.com/new-york/ levittown-ny/the-unthinkable. Next LI Survey. “Who Is the Next Generation of Long Islanders?” Next LI powered by Newsday. Newsday, May 2019. https://next.newsday.com/research/survey-the-next-generation-oflong-islanders/. Simpson, Charlie. Raised Crosswalk into a Neighborhood Slow Zone. Photograph. Amsterdam, 2018. Twitter. Westcott, Ed. #15. Photograph. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1944. US Department of Energy.
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