What about the kids?…and why a map of Long Island?
Most urban planners and transportation analysts know a lot about Levittown. One of the reasons that it was so popular was that parents wanted a superior place to raise their children. J. Llance Mallamo*, a Suffolk County Historian, writes that in the 1950’s and 1960’s there were numerous fantasy and youth related establishments there . “At one time Long Island boasted a seemingly never-ending host of childhood delights including Syosset’s Lollipop Farm, Frank Buck’s Zoo and Monkey Mountain, and Harveys…”.
What changed? Mallamo says demographics but could it really be The Houses of Boom? In the 1980s and 1990s we built McMansions that turned child raising inside and inward.
*see Long Island Architecture, ed. Joann Krieg, 1991