* upbeat 50's music JAMES A. JACOBS: The shopping center was planned, the schools and churches lots were given to congregations and schools, they weren't- The cost of the schools in Levittown, New Jersey, was folded into the house cost.

That wasn't the case here.

JACOBS: Another thing is the sections were entirely engineered.

They were engineered by color.

They were engineered by model type.

There was no deviation.

You decided on the house you wanted and you were given a choice of colors and certain locations or lots with a certain color.

But there was no... Levitt allowed no customization, no deviation from the engineered plans of the houses.

* NEWSREEL NARRATOR: The idea that came to a man named Bill Levitt was this, why not apply to the building of houses the same principles that have brought other American industries to their unexcelled peaks of efficiency and service?

Why not mass produce the elements that go to make up a house, just as the auto industry does with the parts that go into a new car?

Bill Levitt had some other ideas, put kitchen and bathroom back to back and let them share the same plumbing.

Let your plumbers do their work without interruption and without waiting for the carpenter or the bricklayer to get out of the way.

JACOBS: I think we just want to wander around a bit, and ask you questions and talk to you.

NANCY BROWN: Well I'm an original homeowner I've lived in this house since it was brand new, that's 45 years.

And much of what is in my house is the way it was.

I mean, I have the original sink original kitchen.

The original oven.

That kind of thing.

And then the siding, and original storm windows, all that is the same.

JEFF KRULIK: When was this house built?

BROWN: We moved here in 1965.

It was brand new then.

GUY: Is that original?

BROWN: Yes, it is, this whole kitchen is original, except for the refrigerator.

GUY: The color is terrific.

BROWN: You like that?

GUY: Yes!

BROWN: A lot of people didn't like the turquoise.

They kept- they kept taking it off.

GUY: Oh I see.

BROWN: Well, actually, these kitchens came with a turquoise refrigerator too, and a turquoise dishwasher that I had.

JEFF KRULIK: Wow.

* NEWSREEL NARRATOR: The architecture of the houses in Levittown is varied enough to eliminate dreary monotony, while at the same time enough alike to permit the savings that result from standardization.

Many housing projects are a sea of mud when it rains, but not this one.

A wide range of color schemes also brings variety.

[indistinct chatter] [dog barking] PERSIS SUDDETH: All original tile except that bathroom, and original wall and cloth stuff.

GUY: Well you're very nice to let us come see.

PEOPLE ON TOUR: Thank you KRULIK: [whispering] Look at that.

It's original.

WOMAN: What is it?

Is it masonite?

JEFF KRULIK: Some kind of flecked, I don't know, Levitt did this flecked- GUY2: Thank you so much for opening your home to us.

SUDDETH: You're welcome.

GUY2: You're courageous, like it's a lot (chuckles).

GUY: What year was the house built?

SUDDETH: It was built in '61, '62.

[indistinct talking] [dog barking] JUDY COLBERT: Now you can tell the important streets in Bowie because they have sidewalks on both sides.

The semi-important streets only have a sidewalk on one side.

And then the unimportant streets don't have any sidewalks.

Theoretically, we were supposed to have sidewalks on every block, but that was a lost battle.

And Levitt said he would build the schools, but Prince George's County had regulation against someone outside building the school and the county paying for it, which is why we ended up so much later getting schools and why those kids had to be bused for the first couple of years.

And he also dedicated six acres of land to ten different churches from different denominations.

* [Playing Little Boxes] * * Little boxes on the hillside, * * little boxes made of ticky-tacky, * * little boxes on the hillside, 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 went to the university * * where they all were put in boxes * * and they came out all the same * * And they all play on the golf course * * and drink their martinis dry... * [In German] AL GOLATO: Here it is, Belair site of German TV film.

Councilman Al James Golato, his wife Vera and children, Donna, Denise and Jimmy, were chosen by the Producer/Director Andre Carbe from a list of nearly 100 Belair families to be threads that connect to different scenes and facets of suburban life.

[In German] VERA GOLATO: OK, so, bye.

DAUGHTER: Bye Mom, bye Dad.

VERA GOLATO: You want toast or something?

[In German] KRULIK: Tell me how that happened then you got once again, you were telling me, how did that come to be where you got on film, where you got the whole family on film?

AL GOLATO: Well.

I was very close with Don Westcott and his wife, we used to socialize, you know, sort of citizens association, so forth.

One day he just came up, he says, you know, I just got instructions that I've got to make a film.

For what was his name, the guy, his boss?

JEFF KRULIK: Pat Shields.

GOLATO: Shields!

Pat Shields told me that we're going to get a German crew down here.

And what they wanted was a typical American suburban family moving into a new development.

And that's the way it was.

[In German] * KRULIK: What attracted you first and how did you first find out about it?

MARY CONROY: Well we had we lived in Hyattsville in an apartment, and then we moved to a small house in West Hyattsville and a friend of ours, that we were- my husband was very active in the Disabled American Veterans, and someone, he told us that he was going to buy a house, a Levitt house over in Bowie, Maryland.

For some reason or other.

They knew that my husband was highly decorated from the Korean War.

And I guess Levitt wanted someone that would give them a little publicity.

And, so he asked us if we would like to be the first residents.

We said sure!

JIM CROWNE: For my family, my dad was in the military and we moved around from place to place.

He had been looking for a place for some time.

And somebody in the office came to him with a brochure about Levitt homes that were supposed to go up in Bowie.

CONROY: We went through every model home there was, and we bought the one that we could afford, which I think I you know, I'd be lying if I said I knew the exact amount.

But it seems to me that the payments were going to be about a $125 a month.

CROWNE: One Monday morning, while I was at work in the Pentagon about six months before my earliest possible retirement date, one of my young married GIs came over to my desk carrying some housing brochures and asked if I wasn't looking for available housing.

He had heard that I was looking and asked if we had looked Levitt model homes that were being built in Maryland.

I said 'No, that I considered Maryland to be too far out for anyone working in the Pentagon, but that I would be interested in looking at the literature.'

We had to drive a full length of Route 450 from the Baltimore Parkways since Route 50 was not yet connected.

I had driven so far along 450 that we started talking about turning back, that it would be ridiculous to live so far out into Maryland.

Then we finally saw a sign saying Belair was up ahead.

KRULIK: So you picked that house.

Did you pick the lot there or were you just assigned the lot or..?

CONROY: No, you picked your own lot.

You picked a lot where you wanted your house to be.

And I believe there was the only restriction was if you could put a particular house on a certain particular lot.

I think that was the only restriction.

So we wanted a corner lot on the main street, which was Stonybrook Drive, because my husband was an attorney and we wanted a little room maybe to build a little office, which is what we did.

CROWNE: READING There were hundreds of people wandering in and out of the models and hundreds more arriving hour by hour.

Didn't take us long to realize that this was a for real great bargain.

I guess we were among the first.

But I can imagine that as attractive and appealing as these places may have been, there was great hesitation to bite at it because it was, it was so remote.

And when you read the newspaper articles of the time, this just seemed like Bill Levitt had gone off the deep end.

I was sitting at my desk when someone, public relations guy, called me from the Levitt headquarters in New Jersey to ask me if I would mind being identified.

I being my father, as the first family to move into the new Belair community.

I said I didn't mind if it didn't get in the way with my moving in.

He said, no, they would present us with a bottle of champagne, take a few pictures and go through a brief interview for the paper.

So I said, Ok, and for a long time I forgot about it.

So that was a call that he took early on.

CONROY: I had a piece of paper where the guy was handing us um... one of the local papers welcoming us as the first residents.

But I don't know where it is at this point in time.

CROWNE: READING After we were underway, there appeared a guy with a news camera slung over his shoulder, slogging through the mud of our front yard.

He hailed me and walked over to ask if we were the first people to move in.

I said we were supposed to be.

I couldn't be sure, but that we hadn't seen anyone else.

He declared that he'd been wandering through the goddamn mud so long and that as far as he was concerned, we were the first.

He explained that he was the real estate editor for the Washington Star.

He was out in Belair to cover the first day opening of the new Levitt community and said he would like to take a few shots and get a few facts from me about my background family.

We chatted for a few minutes and then he left and we got back to moving in.

The comedy of errors ensued, you know, when it comes to managing the news media and in this kind of undeveloped territory where you know.

JAMIE CROWNE: Of course your family got to be good friends with The Conroys and The Conroys delighted in, you know, representing themselves as the first family of Bowie so, Jim's father would always just needle them.

Well, actually, we're the first family.

CROWNE: They moved in, they moved in about three or four doors away across the backyard lots from us, so, you know, their kids and we kids played around, you know, we were just close family friends for a long time.

CONROY: And we love Bowie, you know, we always did like Bowie very much, a great place to bring your children up it was a great place to live.

People were very friendly.

[In German] V. GOLATO: So are you going to the pool this afternoon?

WOMAN 2: If I have time later.

Do you want to go?

V. GOLATO: I may.

WOMAN 2: Why don't we go then?

V. GOLATO: I'll wait for Jimmy to come home from school.

[In German] DAUGHTER: Hi Mom.

Can I have some ice cream?

V. GOLATO: Yeah.

Sure.

Can you get it?

[In German] [phone rings] RITA SOUWEINE: There were several couples who were very interested in musical theater, and they all got along well and were clever people, and they started sort of writing funny things about living in Bowie and about the long lists we all had for Levitt to come back and fix this and fix that.

And so before you know it, there was a script for a musical.

* RITA SOUWEINE: And it really was hysterical and a lot of fun for all of us to do, and we did it two years two years?

KRULIK: So it wasn't just a one time event?

SOUWEINE: No, it wasn't.

It ran.

J. CROWNE: It was so popular- SOUWEINE: It was so popular because there was no other entertainment.

RITA SOUWEINE: The biggest entertainment were PTA's and school board meetings.

I mean, if you can imagine.

KRULIK: Yeah, it's interesting that you say that because they really I can see why that would be... so important to have the you know, that kind of cultural or just some kind of activity.

SOUWEINE: And there were big families and very difficult times, as Jamie said, the teenagers with very few places to go for any kind of recreation so.

PAT SHIELDS: Well it was just it was a home town, you know, and the people that came in there, they were educated.

They were nice.

The wives, when I was... there and when we opened it up, probably none of the wives worked, it was a one car family, the wives went bananas with cabin fever, the only thing they had to do socially was to go to one of the neighbors for coffee and to rotate the house different house, and every day they'd go and visit each other.

V. GOLATO: Hello.

Hi Audrey.

How are you?

AUDREY: Listen, we're meeting for the Belair Women's Club Scholarship Fund.

Yes, we have our chairman for Somerset and Buckingham, and we'd like you to do us the honors and be the chairlady for the Kenilworth section.

You will?

Oh, that's wonderful.

[In German] GOLATO: Don Westcott says he wants to have a lawn party... out here.

And I said 'Wait a minute, my wife isn't up to doing that.

They were just going to invite anyone around here you know, get a big crowd, and put that on film too.

So, I said ' well who's going to pay for it?'

and he says Levitt.

LADY: Yeah, it was thundering and lightning before I was so upset.

Sit down.

[In German] [chatter] [In German] Bye bye.

See you later.

[In German] LADY: Oh, brother, do you have to do the cooking?

Why don't you get one of the men to do it.

Mark?

MARK: Well, I've got to get my apron on and my big hat and I'll be all set.

[In German] GOLATO: I played golf.

I tried to play golf, my wife was a golfer.

She was the golfer.

She wanted me to learn to play golf.

That's what I was doing, so with a golf course up here, you know, Bowie golf course?

I was on the first tee.

And they had all this crew setting up cameras to get a picture of me driving off.

Wouldn't you know that I completely missed the ball?

That's the way it was affecting me, you see?

The camera crew and the director who was doing it, they were German.

It was even hard to communicate with them, you know, they had some interpreters with them.

But they had no feeling, you know, no... no empathy for what was going on in our lives for two weeks.

* [In German] KRULIK: They followed you for two weeks?

GOLATO: Yes.

KRULIK: And so what they actually- GOLATO: We called it off at a point, we said we've got to stop this.

And so they did, but they still made the film you know, but they didn't go as far as they wanted to go.

My wife couldn't take it anymore.

My children couldn't take it anymore.

The imposition was extraordinary.

KRULIK: So what are you thinking now, about seeing this for the first time in 40 years?

PETE NOVICK: I'm trying to- Sage Lane didn't exist.

That's the only part of Somerset that's not in Somerset.

That was Brunswick.

So Sage Lane is a new one.

Stonehaven.

Ha, I knew somebody on every street, or multiple people.

That's the sewage, we used to call it the sewage, the drainage area, it's like a primeval forest, I can't believe it.

I just can't believe it... That's the house there.

KRULIK: Which one?

[talking in background] NOVICK: That's it!

My bedroom was the corner on the right.

KRULIK: Wow this is your house huh?

NOVICK: That's it.

* KRULIK: Hey Pete, Pete, look, these are pictures.

Graduation pictures on the wall.

NOVICK: Ahh yeah, how far they go?

'72.

[hall chatter] I'm sure they've got '66 KRULIK: Alright look!

NOVICK: "69, '68, '67, '68 yep.

I've worn glasses since the third grade.

KRULIK: You've worn glasses since the third grade, there you are!

DuVal Senior High School, I'll be darned.

KRULIK: But this is where you started to experiment with drugs?

NOVICK: Yeah.

March '66, I came right out here, smoked my first joint, two in a row.

KRULIK: Right here.

NOVICK: Yeah, at the end of the driveway.

KRULIK: Were you with anybody?

NOVICK: No, my friend said to smoke them both because it's your first time it might take a while for it to hit you.

(chuckle) I had to pay 50 cents per joint.

KRULIK: You did what?

NOVICK: 50 cents each.

KRULIK: That's how much it cost per joint?

NOVICK: Yes.

* NOVICK: I remember reading about it, so I try to see if music would sound different, so I started listening to records, you know, I was a pretty spaced.

KRULIK: What kind of sent me into this research was thinking about what it was like for teenagers who kind of came here and were planted in this.

GERARD DEVLIN: It was not good for teenagers.

It was- it was a community designed for small children, even things like here, unlike the original Levittown, the streets were circular.

And that's nice for, you know, traffic and for the kids.

But for the teenagers, it means if they're walking, they have to walk a lot further, you know what.

I mean my children's generation, many of them, like my daughter, came back here to live, the cliche.

I'm sure, you know, it was 'Boring Bowie,' you couldn't wait to get out of 'Boring Bowie.'

And then when you get married and have kids, you're back in 'Boring Bowie.'

JOHNNY FALDUTI: My crew we were the Bowie Blockbusters.

We wore the black leather coat.

We wore the Italian knit sweaters.

We wore the macs, what they would call Dickies, slacks.

And we wore the Chuck Taylor tennis shoes, the white tennis shoes.

We greased our hair back, so we were the blockbusters.

Predominantly Bowie was Ivy League.

We were a minority.

We had all the girls, all the girls wanted to come to us.

[laughs] The Greasers were somewhat defiant.

We had a defiant attitude.

I guess we basically did what we wanted to do.

We weren't wrapped up in the homework.

We were wrapped up in riding around, drinking some beer, smoke a little bit of reefer now.

KRULIK: But how did you- how did the name block, or blockbusters come about?

FALDUTI: I don't know how we got that name.

We somehow we just started calling ourselves the Bowie Blockbusters, Triple B's.

KRULIK: Were you kind of the leader?

FALDUTI: I probably was.

I probably was.

I mean, even the Bowie Blade would tell you that.

FALDUTI: Oh, my God.

'Teen Gang Head,' can you imagine that... is arrested twice on Thanksgiving.

The alleged head of Bowie's teenage greaser gang was arrested and sent to jail a second time.

Armed with a warrant police went down to Food Fair at the Belair Shopping Center arrested bag boy and spirited him from the store still clad in his white apron.

Oh my goodness.

What year is this?

KRULIK: That was um- FALDUTI: 12/5/68?

KRULIK: Right.

FALDUTI: And right after that I went into the Marine Corps.

KRULIK: So how did you come to join the Marines then?

What was the- FALDUTI: I got caught a felony, a felony offense over in Anne Arundel County, and it was a charge that simply wasn't my plan, but it ended up being me that took a $113 out of Pigeon House, you know, and got ran from it and got caught in the swamps across the street there across 301 for hours.

And they arrested me a short time later at the bowling alley playing the pinball machine and took me out Anne Arundel County jail where I stayed.

And then the lawyer that I had, Mr. Bob Flynn, Robert Flynn, who kind of took me under his wing as a stepchild, talked to the circuit court judge in Anne Arundel County and said Mr. Falduti wants to go in the Marines.

Let's let him go into the Marine Corps in lieu of going to Maryland State Prison.

So that's what I did.

So it was motivated by a legal conflict.

CONROY: The kids used to over where Freestate Mall is- KRULIK: It was Boswell Field CONROY: Boswell Field the kids all used to play football over there the Boys Club, they got started over there.

There wasn't any stores over there at all.

It's just a big field.

KRULIK: And then up 450 was the Bowie Inn, the Bowie Inn was up there at the top of the hill.

Yeah, that old restaurant.

CONROY: Oh right.

The Bowie Inn, that was a bucket of blood, that place.

[upbeat 50's jazz music] KRULIK: So it was actually part of a motel, too?

GREGG KARUKAS: Yes.

Yeah, it was set back about 100 yards from 450.

It was just a strip, nine or eight motel rooms.

KRULIK: That was the only property on that parcel of land, which I guess eventually became Hilltop.

GREGG KARUKAS Yeah, it was all woods and field.

KRULIK: was the previous owner, the original owner.

HARRY KARUKAS: The previous owners must have made a living just catering to the racetrack people once a year.

And I think it was the amount of days that the racetrack was open was about 30 days.

But in the meantime, they needed a motel somewhere where the employees of the racetrack could stay, that's how the previous owners made a living at a bar and a motel.

It was just a wholesome family operation.

* KRULIK: And how did you come to arrive here, in Bowie?

DICK PADGETT Basically when I got out of the Air Force, we started looking around for places to live.

We were living with Sheila's mother and Levitt had just opened up this section of Bowie, and we came and looked and we saw this house and bought it.

SHEILA PADGETT: So there was an ad in the Washington Star and it had a picture of a Cape Cod, and it said 'Summer at the Cape.'

And it had air conditioning.

And we were at my mother's house in Congress Heights in Washington, D.C. and sitting on her side porch.

There was no air conditioning.

We had dark shades.

And a lot of fans, but we did not have air conditioning.

So 'Summer at the Cape' sounded good to us.

At that point, my mother was looking in the classifieds also like, 'Oh, here's a house.

Oh, look, I just saw this.

There's a house in Palmer Park and so, and we knew it was time to move.

And for five eighty five down and two twenty five in escrow, we got this swell Cape Cod.

D. PADGETT: That's right.

S. PADGETT: When we came to tour the model homes- I'm doing all the talking- D. PADGETT: Go 'head.

S. PADGETT: We... crossed the picket line.

Because they were talking about integrating and it was not integrated.

DEVLIN: Levitt wouldn't sell to blacks.

And I was really troubled because there was a restrictive covenant on it and of course, I mean I knew enough about American law, the Supreme Court in the case of Shelley v. Kraemer, said restrictive covenants aren't enforced.

But I was uncomfortable being in a house that had it.

There used to be demonstrations every Saturday at the model homes.

Civil rights groups would picket on Sussex, now Sussex Lane.

DEVLIN: When I first, I was chairman of the election board in 1964, in the courthouse, there were no toilets for African-Americans.

If you wanted to go to the bathroom, if you were African-American, you had to go down the street to Tolson's Pool Hall.

KRULIK: Maybe if you could describe the evolution of how you came to protest Levitt, the development at Belair at Bowie.

DR. KARL GREGORY: Well, I was looking for a place for my family, so that was a natural place to look because I was a GS.

I don't know whether I was a GS 10, 9, 10, 11, at that time, that's not a lot of money.

And I couldn't afford a very expensive home and Levitt built quality homes for a lower middle income family.

And that was hard to beat their prices.

But I knew my my offer was not going to be accepted.

So I had nothing to lose.

KRULIK: There's film, you're walking and protesting on the sidewalk, holding the signs.

DR. GREGORY: We were very courteous to the people walking by because we wanted- we didn't want to do anything that would encourage any violence.

We we were respectful of the customers and the staff, but we made it clear we were there for a role and we were going to fulfill that role and nothing was going to get in our way except if the police intervened or something like that.

KRULIK: There's one picture that um, where you're in the sales office, there must have been some media there.

You also see the counter picketers.

Do you recall the counter demonstrators?

DR. GREGORY: Yes there were counter demonstrators on occasion and the signs were often very interesting.

And they often showed that this was really about race more than anything else.

But the sales agent wanted us out of there because they wanted to sell homes, and we wanted them to use whatever good options that they had to get Levitt to change his decision.

And of course, that was not to be.

DICK OCHS: We picketed every Saturday and every Sunday for three months on the weekends at the sales office.

It didn't look like we were making any headway, so by the end of the summer, we decided to escalate our tactics.

And that's when we went in the model home and there were about a dozen of us and wouldn't leave and they didn't want to arrest us.

So we spent the night.

And so they did arrest us the next day and and the NAACP bailed us out.

We went to trial, Fred Weisgal was our attorney, he was an ACLU lawyer.

And he took our case and argued masterfully.

But the all white jury found us guilty anyway of trespassing and fined us each 500 dollars.

And the NAACP paid our fine.

So they paid over 5000 dollars in fines.

As a result of that arrest, it made news, as we were protesting the fact that Levitt was getting government money, federal housing authority money, and still discriminating against the public.

So the FHA loans to Levitt information appeared in an article in The Wall Street Journal at the time, and went all around the country because Levitt wasn't the only developer who was getting FHA loans and discriminating.

So therefore it was national news.

KRULIK: The integration issues... DEVLIN: His position was he will go with whatever the community wants.

And it was pre-Civil Rights Act hadn't passed.

KRULIK: It took a year for it to be completed, I guess- S. PADGETT: No, we bought in... we were told I think maybe we got the information that day.

I don't remember if we came out with what do we have, Mary, with us that day when we then drove around.

But there were like five slabs.

D. PADGETT: Levitt was building- S. PADGETT: There wasn't a house here, there was a slab and this was T285.

D. PADGETT: Right.

[laughs] S. PADGETT: I remember the weirdest things, but yeah T 285.

D. PADGETT: Exactly.

DEVLIN: The Levitt principle, what they build is, one, you had to have huge tracts of land because you're mass-producing and you also have a lot of- it's like Wal-Mart, you have a lot of leverage on your suppliers, but you have to have this huge tract of land in an agricultural area, but still within commuting distance of a major city.

HELEN KRULIK: Dad wanted to be close to the road because of traveling.

And so, therefore, being back where we are, it was convenient for getting onto the highway to go wherever he wanted to go.

STEVE KRULIK: They had an interesting marketing ploy I think as far as that, with the houses, they would put a little marker on each house, on the diorama as it was sold.

And of course, people panicked as they saw houses going and they wanted to get a house.

I'll take this.

I'll take that, I'll take the other one.

S. PADGETT: I think we might be the fourth.

Was it Somerset?

D. PADGETT: Yeah Somerset, Buckingham- [Simultaneously] Kenilworth, Foxhill, Tulip Grove.

S. PADGETT: So we're the fifth.

COLBERT: And I became involved in politics when I moved out here and I became the precinct chairman.

This is this was may still be precinct 7-2, 7th District, 2nd Precinct.

And I was the precinct chairman and oh my goodness, look at these trees.

And... [chuckles] um- KRULIK: This is your street?

COLBERT: This is my street.

This is Sexton Lane.

There are seven houses here.

KRULIK: So, and that's where you wrote 'Colbert's Corner.'

COLBERT: Yes, there was a sign out front, and it was on the corner and it was Colbert, so it was 'Colbert's Corner.'

KRULIK: I'll be darned.

That's how you named 'Colbert's Corner.'

COLBERT: Yes.

KRULIK: We should drive around it so I can get another shot.

I love the fact it never occurred to me that Colbert's corner was on a corner.

COLBERT: Oh yeah.

* KRULIK: Wow, 'Plot To Depose Padgett As Mayor Fails.'

* [In German] COUNCILMAN Well I agree with you, Mr. Mayor.

He seems to be a more experienced man and in the whole field of city management.

* COLBERT: And then, of course, this is the scene that everyone has to have with with the trees.

KRULIK: The famous trees.

COLBERT: The famous trees.

JEFF KRULIK: What can you tell me about the famous trees?

COLBERT: They've been here a long time, longer than we have.

I have no idea.

And then, of course, there's the other set of trees leading down from City Hall, the old City Hall.

KRULIK: My understanding is that Marty Rize helped save these.

COLBERT: It could well be.

He did a lot of wonderful things.

LEO GREEN: One of the real players in the game back in the 1960's, part of the management team, Marty, Marty Rize, who was a director of their maintenance landscape, among other things, right?

Marty, welcome to 'People & Places.'

Tell us what it was like back then.

MARTY RIZE: When we first came down here.

Naturally this was all farm, and we had to find the contractors to develop the area.

We drew up the plans, got the plant materials and we started from scratch.

Looking through the years now and saving the trees on Belair Drive.

And it's wonderful.

And saving those popular trees by the Mansion, and down that old road from 450 to the Mansion, it's been an asset to the community.

And we went through a lot of design to have those trees saved.

KRULIK: You said that these were planted, you believe in... RICK KELLNER: Early 1900's, somewhere around 1907.

All of English and French estates often had what is known as an all�e.

That's A-L-L-E-E with an accent on the first 'e.'

And that was if people wanted to walk, if the carriages were coming up, they would create these roadways.

Now, of course, they weren't paved at the time, right, it was just a carriage or somebody walking up through you.

And as a result, they would usually do it right up to the entrance to a building.

Right.

KRULIK: I mean, how old is your dad there?

MARC RIZE: You know, does he look around 40 maybe?

KRULIK: That's cool.

MARC RIZE: So Dad is, if you're interested in some of it the trees in the Mansion?

He played a huge part in preserving those because they were world record.

He got them registered by the Sate of Maryland.

I mean, not world record, state record.

So, you know, for the width of them, that type of thing.

So he was very into preserving those.

You see, you know, Belair Drive, you know, Facebook, what everybody remembers, should they call 'Shady Drive' they call it all kinds, but 'the trees,' that's what I always knew them.

That was Dad, ensuring that those were preserved.

So he was, you know, very interested in ensuring, you know, that kind of aesthetic for Bowie.

And really, you know, the trees meant that they were his babies you know.

KELLNER: Like I said, we have to close this road when when we're doing any work in here.

Even if I'm going to quickly pick up a branch while I'm driving by, I got to be quick because people are impatient.

So when you walk in the road and I don't want them driving up over the curb because that kind of compaction can really damage the trees even though it doesn't look like it at first.

KRULIK: To split it, was pretty, pretty remarkable.

KELLNER: That's probably the original carriage road, because of that all�e idea, this was the original carriage road, they probably added that later when they put the homes in, and said, we're going to preserve this right of way right in here.

RIZE: You know, I guess he took great pride in the fact that he preserved those and, you know, they became kind of such a landmark, if you will, and a memory for so many people from Bowie.

All you have to say is 'the trees' and people know exactly what you're talking about.

And then so, you know, he took a lot of pride in the fact that he preserved those.

And think about it, they could have been torn down just as easy as anything.

So the fact that he preserved those and ensured that they stayed was definitely a point of pride for him.

I mentioned it in his eulogy.

He's at Arlington.

And in his eulogy I brought that up.

Yeah.

KRULIK: Did you know anything about, like, the fruit trees, they planted fruit trees.

KELLNER: Yeah in the back yard?

I heard a lot about that.

But, you know, here again, it was a good idea.

And there are people that are trying to revitalize that idea to have what is known as like urban farming in your own yard.

The fact of the matter is they take an incredible amount of care.

PHYLLIS LABORWIT: We had peach, apple, pear, And the birds enjoyed them very much.

KRULIK: What kind of trees were planted and this was in every Levitt home?

P. LABORWIT: Every Country Clubber, to the best of my knowledge, got two oak trees in the front because I think they had more... square foot of yard.

A larger house had... the two oak trees and a crab apple in the front, at the end of the driveway were two Pfitzer, a Pfitzer Juniper on each side, three pine trees- LOU LABORWIT: Yeah, pine trees on each side.

P. LABORWIT: On the front and pine trees in the back.

L. LABORWIT: These two trees were here.

KRULIK: This was here?

L. LABORWIT: Yeah, they both of these- P.LABORWIT: Both of these black walnut trees were here.

P. LABORWIT: It's lovely this time of year.

And then in the autumn we do have a problem picking up.

L. LABORWIT: Yeah it takes a few months to finish all the nuts.

DEVLIN: One of the way Levitt built was with unskilled labor and the first people in Somerset had some real problems.

Levitt fixed them all, they took care of it all, But they seem to have solved by the time that first year that we didn't have any major at our house.

And Levitt was very responsive.

They fixed things you know.

DON BEACH: When they were building my house, my father who was a master cabinetmaker, used to come over in the afternoon, and sit on one of their sawhorses while they worked.

And when they left, he would correct all their mistakes.

And to be honest with you, the first houses that were built, the walls were wavering, because when they built the studded in the wall behind the dry wall, it was never correct, I mean never correct.

SHEILA PADGETT: There's probably not a stud where they nailed.

BEACH: Exactly.

DEVLIN: My grandfather bought a house in 1894 and it was the wrong place the backyard was always in the sun.

So we wanted I wanted a house that was shaded so the backyard would be shaded in the afternoon.

So we took them.

We bought a pink house, which were always quite an interesting, Levitt had various colors and our house was pink.

And apparently they found it kind of hard to sell those you know, in fact, when I first painted the house some years later, you had to get- there was a restrictive covenant.

You couldn't change the color of your house unless you got permission from Levitt.

And I called Don Westcott and I said I wanted to paint the house and change the color.

How do I get permission?

What color is it?

I said, 'pink.'

He said, 'Jerry, if you want to change one of those pink houses, I can probably bring Bill Levitt out to handle the brush with you.'

KRULIK: Because nobody was- DEVLIN: They were really... yeah.

How many pink houses were there?

DEVLIN: Oh there aren't any left, so everybody who got one changed it.

BEACH: They gave you a specific amount of time to spend on each unit and it had to be finished.

So if they took shortcuts inside, whoever was a supervisor allowed it to go through and the drywall people came in before the main supervisor, or came down to do the inspection things were covered up, that's why they also had different wiring that they joined together that they shouldn't have done, the copper and the aluminum.

And they had a lot of fires that started.

JOHN PADGETT: Joan Pitkin said that first crew that did those Somerset houses were definitely not as well trained as they were later, she said there were a lot of mistakes.

BEACH: Exactly there were mistakes.

And then we finally got some building inspectors that were honest and they would come by and they would raise the roof.

J. PADGETT: She said she had to hire anyone.

They hired hairdressers.

Just anyone who needed a job.

KRULIK: Is that right?

[crosstalk] BEACH: Old man Levitt, his idea was to build a house and build it as quickly as possible at the lowest amount of money.

J. PADGETT: But that's the Levitt joke.

Like 'How long does it take to build a Levitt house?'

and the answer is 'How soon do you want it?'

BEACH: Right.

NARRATOR: The building of a house in one day is shown during the next 45 seconds by stop motion photography.

* NARRATOR: These are the 36 men who built this house.

Another day, another 40 houses.

S. PADGETT: But our neighbors that lived, they were original also there she talks about, well, first of all, they're in a Colonial, so obviously they're much more affluent than we are.

D. PADGETT Yes.

S. PADGETT: They moved in I think she said December and the mud, she said there were little kids stuck in their yard and her husband had to, like, take cardboard and go out and walk on the cardboard to hoist the kid out, the kid was sunk in so deeply.

It was a mess.

It was really a mess.

* [Playing Little Boxes] * And the people in the houses all went to the university * * where they all were put in boxes * * and they came out all the same * * And they all play on the golf course * * and drink their martinis 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 * where they all are put in boxes * * and they come out all the same * [In German] RITA SOUWEINE & JAMIE CROWNE: [singing] Take the Hanson Highway, 20 miles or more, a quick detour on Collington, will get you to our door.

Turn right until old Kenhill Drive and then begins some mirth, because all the streets begin with 'K' in dear old Kenilworth.

There's Knighthill and Killian, Keaton and Kernel, Kennet...yadda deddda dedda SOUWEINE: But in that song, we named every street in Kenilworth section.

*