Picture Windows: How The Suburbs Happened [Hardcover]

Rosalyn Fraad Baxandall (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 12, 2000

In Picture Windows, Baxandall and Ewen shatter naïve stereotypes of suburban life, replacing them with a clear and compelling historical analysis that situates the development of the suburbs in relation to the pivotal issues of postwar American life. They examine the years from World War II to the present, chronicling the transformation of rural lands into tidy, uniform subdevelopments that promised all of the comforts of postwar technology.The building of the suburbs, the authors argue, was conducted in the context of heated debates over the American standard of living, visionary planners and architects’ attempts to solve the “housing crisis,” women’s liberation, and racial segregation. Baxandall and Ewen use interviews with hundreds of residents of three Long Island suburbs to weave together a story about suburbs past and present, and ultimately to insist on the centrality of suburban experience in the second half of the twentieth century.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This fascinating study of the suburbs of Long Island, New York (and by analogy, those across America) arose from the authors' daily commute from Manhattan to SUNY Old Westbury, which is near Levittown, one of the earliest and perhaps the most famous of American suburbs. Initially they had imagined suburbia "as an anaesthetized state of mind, a no place dominated by a culture of conformity and consumption." Their research quickly taught them otherwise. While Picture Windows does document a growing obsession with middle-class consumer goods, like the televisions that came with 1950 houses at Levittown, it disrupts the myth of suburban serenity to reveal "a rich and stormy history" of political and social conflict. The planners and visionaries of suburbia, as the authors attest, tried to create a place "where ordinary people, not just the elite, would have access to affordable, attractive modern housing in communities with parks, gardens, recreation, stores, and cooperative town meeting places." Shunning the "snobbery" of cultural critics who deplored the "neat little toy houses on their neat little patches of lawn," Baxandall and Ewen find much to celebrate in the burgeoning suburbs. Most of those who flocked to the new towns had been crowded into city slums during the depression and war; they never questioned the architectural conformity of the suburbs, but only rejoiced in the chance of owning their own brand-new homes, places empty of anyone else's memories and rich with potential. Picture Windows is a quintessentially American story, told with skill and conviction. --Regina Marler

From Publishers Weekly

Held up as postwar dream communities, the suburbs have since come to represent a conformist, antisocial and emotionally stultifying life for their residents. Baxandall and Ewen, both professors of American studies at the State University of New York-Old Westbury, revisit the 'burbs and place their conception and growth in a broad political, cultural and economic context, tracing the many changes that have occurred since the '50s. Based on new historical research and interviews with more than 230 suburbanites (many have been residents since the 1920s, '30s and '40s), Baxandall and Ewen present a detailed overview of how the interplay between urban populations and outlying areas produced the suburbs. They are at their best highlighting instances of racial and class tensions (i.e., in the 1920s one in eight residents of the new suburb of Freeport, Long Island, alarmed by the influx of immigrants and blacks, were members of the Ku Klux Klan). But the most enlightening part of their study details how postwar conservative Republicans, working with the building industry, assailed the concept of public housing in the first stage of their all-out attack on the domestic policies of the New Deal. At federal hearings on public housing led by Sen. Joseph McCarthy in 1947, the senator essentially scuttled federally financed public housing by calling it a "breeding ground for communists." While Baxandall and Ewen never quite shake off the charges against 1950s suburbs, they do make a convincing case that economic, racial and ethnic diversity as well as new opportunities for women make contemporary suburbs substantively different from their predecessors. (Feb.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 1 edition (January 12, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465070450
• ISBN-13: 978-0465070459
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,647,977 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars We're living here in Levittown., May 30, 2000

By 

"joereskin" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Picture Windows: How The Suburbs Happened (Hardcover)

"Picture Windows" is a unique analysis of the suburban phenomenon, to be sure. Knowing that it was written by two New York city professors, I approached it with mild trepidation, expecting the familiar attitude of New Yorkers toward Long Islanders. And although that attitude - that Long Islaners, and suburbanites at large, are cretinous, culturally void ciphers - is pretty well suppressed here, Baxandall and Ewen fail to entirely conceal their snobbery, even as they admit to it. In many of the extracts from their interviews of Long Islanders, and in their analyses of these people's thoughts, one detects the faintest smirk of condescension.

Nonetheless, "Picture Windows" is an interesting read. In particular, the chapters about suburban life in the 1950s and the struggles surrounding integration are thoughtful and well written. The first sections cover, in sometimes excruciating detail, the political battles that arose pre- and postwar about who should house the unhoused. Baxandall and Ewen's coverage of the politics of housing can, at times, encourage faster page turning, as the desire to skip over long sections about congressional hearings grows. Perhaps one chapter on this would have sufficed. But the book does pick up speed and reawaken the reader's interest once this background material is exhausted.

For the most part, "Picture Windows" is a worthwhile book. The snobbery the authors question and seemingly decry is not absent, though it is cleverly hidden. One pictures Levittown, enclosed in an enormous glass cage, and the authors, standing at a safe distance taking notes and wondering what it is that makes these suburbanites tick. And some sections read like the phone book and could stand some trimming. Otherwise, for urbanites and suburbanites alike, "Picture Windows" is a useful study.

One final note: Either this book didn't pass through any kind of copy editing and proofreading stages at all, or those doing the jobs were watching the game and having a Bud at the time. It seemed not a page went by without some glaring grammatical or typographical error. Hopefully, the problems will be corrected in future printings.

16 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Basically a good read., February 5, 2000

By 

Michael J Woznicki "Michael J Woznicki" (Holland, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Picture Windows: How The Suburbs Happened (Hardcover)

Is living in the suburbs, the nice green lawns, the big houses, the picture perfect family life that seems to be accepted norm? Picture Windows may paint a completely different outlook and you might be surprise to read what they have to say.

Thinking the book was another liberal based, social agenda book, I discovered that the book details how suburbs have evolved over the lat 100 years and how stereo typical attitudes have perpetuated the myths I have come to accept.

The authors' breakdown the essence of the suburbia lifestyles showing you the evolution of the growth of communities away from the big city. They also explain how racial segregation, women's' liberation, integration and immigration have all played a part in the growth of suburbs.

The Authors' provide convincing arguments, and while I may not agree with some of the points, I found that they had provided facts to back up their claims. The book is an easy read and most enjoyable. You can check out Basic Books web site for more information.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars worth reading, but deeply flawed, March 22, 2002

By 

katydaly (Palmyra, NJ USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Picture Windows: How The Suburbs Happened (Paperback)

This book is interesting and worth reading because its subject is interesting. For too long, the suburbs have been treated largely as an object of satire or contempt. Baxandall and Ewen do a good job of contesting this stale perspective, but the book's focus on Long Island - and Levittown in particular, seems unnecessarily narrow, even parochial. They appear to be totally unaware of the similar Levitt developments - also named Levittown - in Pennyslvania and New Jersey. Surely, these might have provided the basis for some useful comparisons. Likewise, the authors appear oblivious to the landmark NJ Supreme Court "Mount Laurel" decisions of the 1970s and 1980s, (chronicled in David Kirp's much better book "Our Town"') which have had national implications for housing policy and which offers a direct challenge to Baxandall and Ewen's claim that developers have shown no interest in low income housing. The authors don't even make very good use of the apparently extensive interviews they conducted with Levittown residents of the 1940s-1960s era. They fail to convey any real sense of the rhythms and rituals of suburban life in this period. In short, this is not a bad book; just a very disappointing one.