Oh Levittown, Oh Levittown!
How world-renowned your name
A concept and a venture
Whose uniqueness brought you fame.
You rose up from the Island
Between the ocean and the sound,
Where scattered pines and miles of grass
Grew on that fertile ground.
New Indians, Matinecocks
Once came to hunt for game,
Their trails criscrossed the glacial wash
Before the settlers came.
And when they came, those Europeans
From far across the sea,
They saw the richness in the soil
So void of rock and tree.
With hitches and with harness
With mules they slowly plod,
Their plows, set deep, began to cut
Down through the thick black sod.
On pastures they would graze their herds
On plowed land they would sow
Vast acres of potatoes
Their choice of crops to grow.
But after some three hundred years
Of rural open range,
The Hempstead Plains was now to see
A most historic change.
For under that great open sky
A visionary came,
A builder with a dream and plans,
Bill Levitt was his name.
With methods that were yet untried
Before Nineteen Forty-Seven,
His leadership gave thousands then
Their own small piece of Heaven.
What greater legacy could one achieve
Than building roofs above our heads?
With living rooms and kitchens
And a place to put our beds.
No one had ever tried this
In such a massive way,
Over seventeen thousand well-built homes
A wonder to this day.
Now rightly so this town is named
For those who built this place
A famous dot upon a globe
That spins around through space.
We here now, the inheritors
Toward the future boldly stride
To maintain that bequeathed to us
A community with pride.
Oh Levittown, my Levittown,
How world renowned your name,
Our homes the treasured jewels you wear
Upon your crown of fame.
written by Wendell S. Storms
October 20, 1997
for Levittown's 50th Anniversary
