Levitt, William J(aird) (1907–1994)

US builder. With his brother and father he formed Levitt and Sons (1929), a construction company. He served as president and managed the company's business operations as it successfully built nearly 3,000 houses in its first 11 years. The firm built mass-produced housing for the US Navy during World War II and successfully adapted to producing civilian accommodation in Levittown, Long Island, New York, after the war. There he built 17,500 small but well-equipped, landscaped, and affordable houses and associated public and community buildings (1947–51). A second Levittown in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, followed.

Levitt was born in New York City. He was educated at New York University. He called his firm ‘the General Motors of the housing industry’. Levitt attracted controversy for racially discriminatory sales policies (upheld by the Pennsylvania courts in 1955). He sold the company to International Telephone and Telegraph in 1968. His later career was marred by failures in foreign projects in the 1970s, and in the 1980s, by three disastrous Levittown-like Florida projects and accusations of misappropriation of funds.