Memories of early Levittown and a home on Sandpiper Lane

Beth Cummings at age five in 1948, before her family moved to Levittown.

A recent photo of the house 34 Sandpiper Lane "on steroids". An older photo is not available.

Looking down Sandpiper Lane this month.

Click on pix to enlarge

Color photos by Marilyn Monsrud Frese

The blog series of stories with photos of early Levittown houses, shown with a recent shots of the same houses, has been well received. If only more people had old pictures of the homes they grew up in, the series could continue for months.

Old Levittowners enjoy the photos of the early houses, before there were so many improvements that you could not recognize what Levitt and Sons had built more than 60 years ago. However, I would have appreciated living in a house with more than one bathroom.

By BETH CUMMINGS

Class of 1960

I love these old photos that appear in the blog. It’s always a special treat to look at photos from the earliest days of Levittown, especially the ones showing the houses sitting on a sea of mud, the teensie-weenie baby trees (and dreaded sticker bushes) and the wooden boards we walked on till they were replaced by sidewalks. I always enjoy the old photos of the houses "before they were pumped up on steroids," to quote Frank Barning. Pumped up was the sad fate of our family’s poor little Levitt house.

Beginning in 1949, our family lived at 34 Sandpiper Lane. (Sandpiper was the short street that ran parallel to Redwing at the opposite end of Redwing Park). During the time our family owned the house, there was never any money for external improvements like a driveway and carport/garage, or expansion upward or outward.

Only absolutely necessary changes, driven by living space needs of our growing family, were made to the inside of the house: the kitchen was "squared off," and the attic was made into two bedrooms and the world’s tiniest powder room.

When my folks finally sold the house and moved to Florida, it looked pretty much the same as it always had. In fact, it had been so little improved over the years that the real estate people were stretched to the very limits of their creative writing skills as they tried desperately to craft a property description that would be attractive enough to pique potential buyers’ interest and yet sufficiently truthful to stop short of actual misrepresentation.

The notice they ended up publishing said – among other amusing things – that our house included "a lovely upstairs wrap-around bedroom" (because the chimney came up through it), and that the living room had "wall-to-wall floor-to-ceiling windows offering a panoramic view of a park" (that is, a panoramic view of weeds in Redwing Park). My father was delighted when he read the ad, and he joked, "Wow, this place sounds great – I’d like to live there."

Fast forward to the weekend of the 30th (or was it the 40th?)* Class of 1960 reunion, when my sister and I drove around Levittown to see our street and our old house. By that time, all the houses on our little street had been so "improved" that it was hard to identify them.

Worst of all, ours was completely unrecognizable. We had to check the house number on the curb before we’d believe it – there in front of us was this unbelievably tacky behemoth of a structure squatting all over the lawn we used to play on. The new owners had attached an enormous garage (with driveway to match), and the whole structure had been expanded in every possible direction, with its sides nearly reaching the next-door property lines, and a roof line whose height probably tests the outer limit of legality.

The construction looked really cheap, and we couldn’t believe this eyesore could possibly be in compliance with construction and zoning laws. Betcha Mr. Levitt would turn over in his grave if he could see it now.

I suppose it’s true what they say, that you can’t go back. But we can still "visit," courtesy of our old photos.

________________

* You know you’re getting old when you can’t tell decades apart.

I love the photos of early Levittown houses, before there were so many improvements that you could not recognize what the Levitts built

Shown above are before and after shots of 3 Pinetree Lane, 1956 and recently. This was the home of Beth Cummings' classmate, Louise Nicolosi Hayn.

By BETH CUMMINGS '60

I love these old photos that appear in the blog. It’s always a special treat to look at photos from the earliest days of Levittown, especially the ones showing the houses sitting on a sea of mud, the teensie-weenie baby trees (and dreaded sticker bushes) and the wooden boards we walked on till they were replaced by sidewalks. I always enjoy the old photos of the houses "before they were pumped up on steroids," to quote Frank Barning. Pumped up was the sad fate of our family’s poor little Levitt house.

Beginning in 1949, our family lived on Sandpiper Lane. (Sandpiper was the short street that ran parallel to Redwing at the opposite end of Redwing Park.) During the time our family owned the house, there was never any money for external improvements like a driveway and carport/garage, or expansion upward or outward. Only absolutely necessary changes, driven by living space needs of our growing family, were made to the inside of the house: the kitchen was "squared off," and the attic was made into two bedrooms and the world’s tiniest powder room.

When my folks finally sold the house and moved to Florida, it looked pretty much the same as it always had. In fact, it had been so little improved over the years that the real estate people were stretched to the very limits of their creative writing skills as they tried desperately to craft a property description that would be attractive enough to pique potential buyers’ interest and yet sufficiently truthful to stop short of actual misrepresentation.

The notice they ended up publishing said – among other amusing things – that our house included "a lovely upstairs wrap-around bedroom" (because the chimney came up through it), and that the living room had "wall-to-wall floor-to-ceiling windows offering a panoramic view of a park" (that is, a panoramic view of weeds in Redwing Park). My father was delighted when he read the ad, and he joked, "Wow, this place sounds great – I’d like to live there."

Fast forward to the weekend of the 30th (or was it the 40th?)* Class of 1960 reunion, when my sister and I drove around Levittown to see our street and our old house. By that time, all the houses on our little street had been so "improved" that it was hard to identify them.

Worst of all, ours was completely unrecognizable. We had to check the house number on the curb before we’d believe it – there in front of us was this unbelievably tacky behemoth of a structure squatting all over the lawn we used to play on. The new owners had attached an enormous garage (with driveway to match), and the whole structure had been expanded in every possible direction, with its sides nearly reaching the next-door property lines, and a roof line whose height probably tests the outer limit of legality.

The construction looked really cheap, and we couldn’t believe this eyesore could possibly be in compliance with construction and zoning laws. Betcha Mr. Levitt would turn over in his grave if he could see it now.

Guess it’s true what they say, that you can’t go back. But we can still "visit," courtesy of our old photos, so thanks for keeping them coming.
________________
* You know you’re getting old when you can’t tell decades apart. LOL.

Rumble at the pizza joint - a gritty Levittown story

Click on photo of Meadowbrook Theater to enlarge

By Beth Cummings
Class of 1960

One night during my senior year at Division Avenue High School, my friend Katie (Island Trees High School) and I went to see a movie at the Meadowbrook Theater. I don't know the actual date this incident took place, but I see from IMDB that the movie we saw that evening was released in December 1959. Presumably it played at the Meadowbrook during that month or maybe in January 1960.

The movie was On the Beach, a chilling, tragic story that takes place after World War III has destroyed earth. As the movie begins, the entire population of earth is dead, except for a few survivors in Australia – the last habitable area of the planet – but the nuclear fallout is moving inexorably toward them and it will soon kill them too. The story deals with the characters' coming to terms with their imminent death. By the final frame, they and the planet are dead.

Katie and I hadn't realized it was going to be such a depressing, hopeless film, and we left the theater feeling stunned and miserable. We went straight over to the pizzeria, as much to clear our heads as to get a snack. On the way in, we noticed a bunch of the "rocks" from school hanging around outside – lots of preening, posturing, smoking, and basically looking cool (bored), but nothing that looked threatening.

The pizzeria was packed, but we managed to get the last available table, about halfway back and with a straight view of the front door. We were about halfway through eating when we heard some sort of commotion outside, then a lot of yelling. Suddenly the front door opened. One of the tough girls stepped in and matter-of-factly announced to the manager behind the counter, "Hey. There's a fight out here. Somebody got stabbed. You better call the police." And she calmly walked back out and closed the door.

The manager just stood there, shocked, for a second. Then, just as he collected his thoughts and turned to make the phone call, the girl stepped back in and said, just as flatly, "Hey. You better get an ambulance too."

Everybody in the place started whispering among themselves -- what would happen next? Katie and I were pretty sure that we were supposed to stay to give witness statements when the police came. At the same time, we knew that if our parents ever heard that we'd been present for this incident, we would be in parental protective custody for the rest of our lives and our folks would never let us go anywhere at night ever again. Plus (we justified) there were plenty of other kids there who'd seen everything we'd seen, so probably our witness statements wouldn't really be needed anyway.

Katie and I leapt from our table, bolted to the entrance and opened the door. One of the tough girls was standing just outside, and I remember stupidly whispering, "um....excuse me" to her. She shrugged and edged aside. I took one step and then froze. There, lying on the sidewalk right in front of me, was the guy who’d been stabbed, and the knife was still in him. The only way we could get out was to step over his legs (which we did, as respectfully as we could). Katie and I ran off into the dark as fast and as far as we could, and we never ever told our parents. I never did hear what happened – what the stabbing was about, who did it, whether anyone got arrested, or even whether the victim survived.

Kids learned the hard way when they messed with our teachers

By Beth Cummings, 1960
One day in art class a student (one of those scary, leather-jacketed hoods) who was sitting at my table got rude and belligerent with Mr. Cetnarowski. I was (as usual) daydreaming, so I completely missed whatever precipitated the incident. When I looked up, the guy had stood up, turned around from the table and was taking a swing at Mr. C’s face.

We were all stunned. Here was this tough hood who was probably in fights all the time (and maybe even carried a knife in his boot) about to beat up a small, defenseless art teacher. (How little we knew – we later heard that Mr. C was a former U.S. Marine.) Mr. C easily blocked the punch and then clipped the guy under the jaw – the hit wasn’t hard, but it was perfectly targeted, and the kid sailed over the art table and landed on the floor next to the windows on the other side.

Mr. C told us to get back to our work and be quiet until he got back, then he grabbed the not-so-tough kid by the collar and escorted him to the principal’s office. We all just sat there holding our breath and listening as the crashing sounds of the kid ricocheting off the metal hall lockers faded in the distance.

For a student coming to DAHS as a 7th grader, just walking in the corridors was a really overwhelming experience. Unlike in grammar school, you had to go to a different room for every class, it was sometimes hard to remember how to get where you were going. The halls were always crowded and everybody was so much bigger than you were that sometimes you couldn’t see the numbers on the classroom doors. There was very little time to get to your class before the bell rang.

Often the halls were crowded, like a Manhattan subway stop at rush hour, and the big kids would push the smaller kids out of their way. Miss McGuigan, who taught Latin, was about the size of most junior high students – five feet tall or so, and slim. I happened to be walking a little behind her one day when a tall guy, mistaking her for a student, gave her a shove. "Move it, girlie!," he grunted. I saw her touch his hand, and suddenly he was flat on his butt on the floor, staring up at this tiny little teacher!

Here's another memory. The bell had just rung and I was walking very briskly ("No running in the halls!") to get to my next class. I saw a few other last-minute stragglers desperately darting down the stairs and around the corner. Mr. Simes stepped out of his classroom to check the hallway just in time to see someone zip around the corner and start to bound up the "down" stairway. "Hold it right there, young man!," roared Mr. Simes. He grabbed that little offender by the back of the neck right off the third or fourth step, stood him at the foot of the stairs, and turned him around to "face the music." It was Mr. Danieux, another teacher.