From Community Programs to International Stardom: Sylvia Weinstock

By Katherine Parente, Intern for the Levittown History Collection

Programming is a vital part of a public library. They have the ability to bring members of the community together to learn or improve important skills, socialize, and enjoy activities in a shared space for free. Most importantly, their accessibility ensures that all members of the community are able to participate. Levittown Public Library has always seen the value in programming, which is represented in its history. In the library’s early years, a strong emphasis was placed on programs, and many of those programs are documented with photographs in the Publicity Photographs Collection, which can be found in the Levittown History Collection.¹ These included a variety of programs for all ages, including children’s story times, arts and crafts, design, and gardening activities. 

One such program took place in 1979, which was a baking demonstration and workshop. The instructor was a local baker and cake decorator from Brooklyn named Sylvia Weinstock. She and many enthusiastic participants created desserts such as cakes, pies, and pastries, which were captured in photographs for the History Collection. Years later, Weinstock would become a widely successful baker and decorator, creating extravagant wedding cakes for high-profile celebrities, lavish events around the world, and guest judging on reality competition TV shows such as Food Network’s Chopped and Netflix’s Nailed It!

Levittown Public Library. (1978). Pastry Demo: Sylvia Weinstock Instructing Workshop [Photograph]. Levittown Public Library Publicity Photographs Collection. (LHC.LPP.1020, LPP.015). Levittown History Collection, Levittown Public Library, Levittown, NY.LHC.LPP.1020_LPP.012

Levittown Public Library. (1978). Pastry Demo: Sylvia Weinstock Instructing Workshop, Assisting Participants [Photograph]. Levittown Public Library Publicity Photographs Collection. (LHC.LPP.1020, LPP.015). Levittown History Collection, Levittown Public Library, Levittown, NY.

Weinstock began her career as an elementary school teacher on Long Island, having completed her bachelor’s degree at Hunter College and a master’s degree in education at Queens College. It wasn’t until 1980, at the age of 50, that she began baking professionally from her own store in Manhattan, Sylvia Weinstock Cakes, founded by Weinstock and her husband, Ben. She had practiced the art during her family’s ski trips to Hunter Mountain in Upstate New York.² The business started out small, with cakes ordered and purchased by appointment. However, demand quickly grew within the next few years, when she was commissioned by top hotels in the city and by the elite. Over the years, word spread even further, and throughout her career Weinstock’s impressive clientele included celebrities such as Whitney Houston, Oprah Winfrey, Robert De Niro, and Bill Gates, and political figures like the Kennedys and Clintons.³ 

Creator: Manny Hernandez | Credit: Getty Images

Copyright: 2014 Getty Images

How did Weinstock’s business become highly successful so quickly? Her cake decorating was considered transformative in the industry. Traditionally, wedding cakes were small and simple with little decoration. Weinstock transformed the way these desserts were decorated by creating extravagant floral designs and multiple layers. To create perfect replicas, she deconstructed real roses and studied each petal, sculpting her sugar dough flowers until they were just right. Another staple of her cakes was that she only used buttercream icing, which takes more time to smoothen, but refused to take the “easier” route with fondant. She once told The New York Times, “I hate fondant. It’s cheap and easy.”⁴

Later in her career, she appeared as a guest judge on several reality competition baking shows. She appeared in Season 1, Episode 9 of Top Chef: Just Desserts in 2010, Season 1, Episode 1 of Nailed It! in 2018, and Season 43, Episode 11 of Chopped: Sweets in 2019. 

Sylvia Weinstock and fellow judge Jacques Torres advising a contestant on Nailed It!

Creator: Greg Gayne / Netflix

Copyright: 2018 Netflix

She remained highly successful in her career until her death in 2021 at the age of 91. Her work pioneered an entire culinary industry, influencing the luxury art around the world and for future generations of bakers and artists. She is appropriately dubbed the “da Vinci of Wedding Cakes” and “Queen of Cakes” by the media and peers in the industry.⁵  

Sylvia Weinstock’s remarkable career serves as a reminder that the impact of a public library’s programming can extend far beyond the event. What began as a simple, local workshop in 1979 now stands as part of Levittown Public Library’s history, preserved as physical, and newly digital, photographs in its collection. Her story shows how community programs can bring people together to create, learn, and form lasting connections, and perhaps become a stepping stone to unexpected opportunities. 

Interesting Woman SYLVIA WEINSTOCK

Echo New York

Levitt Houses: Expansion Attics

By Emily Rennie, Archivist for the Levittown History Collection

Most people would agree that one of the eeriest parts of a house is its attic. To celebrate this spine-chilling season on the Levittown History Collection Blog, we’re taking a look at the expansion attics built into the original Levitt houses in Levittown, N.Y.

Worthing, J. (n.d.). Interior Construction of an Attic and Crawl Space [Photograph]. Photograph Collection (LHC.PHO.1036, Book X, PHO.256). Levittown History Collection, Levittown Public Library, Levittown, N.Y.

Attics are a common setting in horror movies, capitalizing on their darkness and unfamiliarity to symbolize hidden and unexplored secrets. In stark contrast, attics in early Levitt homes were a symbolic platform for growth, upon which home-owners could practice American individualism within their cookie-cutter suburb.

Homes in the Levittown development were mass-produced at a rate of 20 houses per day¹. The building firm, Levitt & Sons, made several architectural decisions to reach such a production speed that could accommodate the high demand for housing after the war, including the decision to construct expansion attics. These unfinished second floors required low effort for construction crews to assemble and could easily be converted into habitable spaces in the future by the home-owner. The DIY potential of the attic space made the identical homes adaptable to the different and evolving needs of families.

Eisinger, L. (1955). Levitt House Attic. In L. Eisinger (Ed.), How to Finish Attics and Basements (pp. 50-53). Fawcoll Publications Inc. Reference Collection (Literature), Levittown History Collection, Levittown Public Library, Levittown, N.Y.

Residents took pride in transforming their spaces and in helping others in the community to do the same. During the 1950's, Levittown resident, Oscar Spier, instructed attic construction courses at Division Avenue School to teach even the inexperienced carpenter methods of remodeling². Around the same time, another Levittowner, Harry Burroughs, published a series of articles in the first volume of Levittown’s magazine, Thousand Lanes, that guided basic renovations on early Levitt attics³. Burroughs provided intricate instructions, including an introduction to construction terminology, to support the local community in individually transforming their homes.

Burroughs, H. E. (1952, January). Attic Construction: In easy stages. Thousand Lanes, 1(3) 8-9, 23, 25. Thousand Lanes Collection (LHC.THO.1001), Levittown History Collection, Levittown Public Library, Levittown, N.Y.

Wheaton, J. (1951, December). A Leavitt– not Levitt finished attic room. Thousand Lanes, 1(2) 14-15. Thousand Lanes Collection (LHC.THO.1001), Levittown History Collection, Levittown Public Library, Levittown, N.Y.

Eisinger, L. (1955). Levitt House Attic. In L. Eisinger (Ed.), How to Finish Attics and Basements (pp. 50-53). Fawcoll Publications Inc. Reference Collection (Literature), Levittown History Collection, Levittown Public Library, Levittown, N.Y.

In 1951, four years after the development began, Levitt & Sons announced that new houses built for the development would include a partially finished attic, supplying an additional 180 square feet of living space⁴. The new attic room would come complete with “a double-size clothes closet…a three-drawer chest, a section of open shelves and a section of sliding-door cabinets⁵.”

Extra room built in ‘51 Levitt home. (1951, April 8). New York Times, 6R. Vertical File (Early Levittown I), Levittown History Collection, Levittown Public Library, Levittown, N.Y.

These days, it would be difficult to find an unfinished attic in Levittown– they have all been transformed. The houses themselves are barely recognizable as the replicated starter homes they began as, each one remodeled and expanded upon, starting with the attic.

Introduction: A Very Brief History of the Levittown History Collection

By Emily Rennie, Archivist for the Levittown History Collection

(1968). Mildred Cantor and a Library Cadet Looking at Material from the Levittown History Collection [Photograph]. Photograph Collection (LHC.PHO.1036, Book X, PHO.659). Levittown History Collection, Levittown Public Library, Levittown, N.Y.

Documenting the history of Levittown has been an ongoing project by the Levittown Public Library since the library’s founding in 1951. Although Levittown had only been established in 1947, residents understood that they were a part of something important as the blueprint for the deluge of suburbs emerging in post-World War II America. By 1956, the public library in Levittown had accumulated a comprehensive assemblage of historical materials. Newsclippings were collected by librarians and indexed into a large cabinet, early 19th century atlases of the local area were purchased by the library, and yearbooks of the local schools were amassed¹. Also added were schools budget reports, a survey of the community by the Levittown Citizens committee, local voting results, and “complete scores and figures for all of Levittown High’s football and basketball games…for the sports-minded members of the community².”

In 1968, the library published a call for contributions to its Levittown History Collection in the Levittown Tribune, seeking material including “photographs of the area, information about early years of the community, brochures, advertisements, magazine and newspaper articles about Levittown³." Around the same time, the library initiated its Levittown Oral History Project, which recorded the first-hand accounts of residents who played prominent roles in shaping the community. The active participation of the community helped to establish a collection at the library reflective of the architectural and social development of Levittown from the perspective of those who lived there. 

(1967). Judge Paul Widlitz Being Interviewed for the Levittown History Collection Oral History Project [Photograph]. Photograph Collection (LHC.PHO.1036, Book X, PHO.658). Levittown History Collection, Levittown Public Library, Levittown, N.Y.

The Levittown Public Library officially declared its Levittown History Collection in 1972⁴, mandating the preservation of our community history and recognizing the preservation of local memory as tantamount to the other services the library provides. Today, our community collection is used for research and exhibitions across the globe. This blog intends to make our collection more accessible and strives to contextualize the heritage of our town, Levittown.

Exhibition view of Suburbia: Building the American Dream at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona. (2024). Barcelona, Spain. Photograph by Cris Palomar.