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When
I was very young I had a schoolteacher, a liberal woman called Miss
Smith. Miss Smith had bobbed hair and wore cheesecloth shirts. She
played an acoustic guitar and would teach us songs, which we all
sang together on hot afternoons. She taught us a song called Little
Boxes.
Little Boxes is a song about mindless conformity. Pete Seeger popularised the song in 1963 when he released it on his seminal folk protest album 'We Shall Overcome'. But it was written by Malvina Reynolds in 1961, possibly about Daly City near San Francisco. As I've grown up I've always associated it with Levittown. We didn't have the time to visit the first Levittown on Long Island, so we made do with the second, in Pennsylvania, which was, by the time it was completed in 1958, the biggest planned community constructed by a single builder in the United States - William Levitt. Everything about Levittown is familiar. It's the American 'burb you will have seen on any television or on any cinema screen. From the low, pastel houses, the serene churches, the idealised Disney-fied architecture, to the totally generic malls, Levittown unfolds in front of you in slow motion. You can't help but hum Pleasant Valley Sunday to yourself whilst you drive the never-ending residential streets. It's all exactly how you'd imagine it, including the lack of black people because of Levitt's whites-only sales policy. It's hard to know if people still aspire to living here, or if they just end up in one of the lemon-coloured bungalows. Anyway, Levittown is just like any other planned environment - from Milton Keynes to Celebration USA - it's a fascinating land of dreams, unreal and very very very creepy. Little Boxes Little boxes on the hillside Little boxes made of ticky-tacky Little boxes, little boxes Little boxes, all the same. There's a green one and a pink one And a blue one and a yellow one And they're all made out of ticky-tacky And they all look just the same. And the people in the houses All go to the university And they all get put in boxes Little boxes, all the same. And there's doctors and there's lawyers And business executives And they're all made out of ticky-tacky And they all look just the same. And they all play on the golf-course And drink their Martini dry And they all have pretty children And the children go to school. And the children go to summer camp And then to the university And they all get put in boxes And they all come out the same. And the boys go into business And marry, and raise a family And they all get put in boxes Little boxes, all the same. There's a green one and a pink one And a blue one and a yellow one And they're all made out of ticky-tacky And they all look just the same. Levittown, PA Levittown: Building the American Dream Levittown: Documents of an Ideal American Suburb |
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