A planned city in Nassau County, Long Island, created between 1947 and 1951 and named after its founder, the Jewish building contractor Abraham Levitt (1880–1962). Composed of uniform, inexpensive single-family homes, the settlement was the archetypal modern suburb in the United States and the model for many other suburban settlements. Starting in the late 1940s the massive migration of American Jews from city centers into the suburbs can be traced through the history of Levittown.