Not to most people. Toll Brothers executives themselves, while insisting that their homes are well-built, will tell you that nobody ever asks how thick the walls are, or how many cubic feet per minute the bathroom fans move. And the houses meet all building codes and regulations. William Levitt, who built the kind of post-war tract homes that helped define the way Americans live, knew a thing or two about giving folks the housing they wanted at a price they could afford. Levitt and his Levittowns came to symbolize home-building in his era, and if the economy picks up again, Robert Toll might someday occupy a similar niche in the history of ours.
People are proud and happy to exhibit their success.
Toll may have a visceral understanding of this. He lives in a classic 18th-century farmhouse in Bucks County and maintains a fashionably sleek apartment in Manhattan, but he is descended from pious Russian Jews who were in the building trades. His great-grandfather, a teacher and rabbi, became a bricklayer, and his grandfather was a plasterer. His father, also born in Russia, built houses in the Philadelphia area. Making walls and other parts of Toll Brothers houses in a factory saves on waste and expenses, and comes in handy when skilled labor is in short supply.