Fall 2004 Edition          

Radburn:  One of the Seven Wonders of Fair Lawn   Fair Lawn News readers voted Radburn as one of the Seven Wonders of Fair Lawn.  Here's some of the things they said:   - Whenever I visit Radburn, I think "Wow, it's like heaven on earth."   - Because everybody walks in Radburn, I've met so many people.  In a way that I never have in other places I've lived.   The paths bring people together in a way that no ordinary suburban community does.    - People are safe from cars.  The pedestrian paths allow people to go to homes, school, parks, playgrounds, and swimming pools.  Without ever crossing a street.              - There is almost no crime in Radburn.  I think it's because the houses are close together and the people know each other. That helps a lot.    - It's a great place to grow up in.  That's why there are so many 2nd and 3rd generation Radburn families.    - The parks and paths allow little and big kids to meet their friends, play ball, go swimming and go to school with great freedom.   -  The design of Radburn has created a tight-knit community.    -  Because the homes and the layout of them do not provide a lot of privacy, Radburn attracts very sociable people.   -  It has great social programs like summer camp, exercise programs, and Family Day.   - The paths allow children to walk to school or to their friends without having to cross a street.  It means the Radburn kids all know each other.   - Because our neighbors all know each other, we all keep an eye out for each other's kids.   - The separation of cars from pedestrians and the superblocks have been influential in the design of many other communities around the world.   - Even now, many new communities are striving to be configured to encourage the neighborly environment that we enjoy.   - We do not suffer from the anonymity that is inevitable in so many other places. This provides an extra measure of security to the old, to children, to us all.      Evelyn McHugh, author of Radburn history articles, says: I continue to be amazed at how many people in Fair Lawn have no idea of how groundbreaking the concept behind Radburn was. I know I somehow managed to miss it despite going to school in town, and having friends who lived there. The speed at which Bergen County was developing in the 1920's, the way the automobile changed where people worked and lived, the way the unified plans for the highways we all take for granted now were laid out by people that could have had no idea what eighty years in the future would bring - it's all the route that got this part of NJ from pure farms to 98% development in less than one lifetime. And Radburn was at the center of all that. My neighborhood (near River Road) was built about four or five years before the Radburn project was announced. It was designed to be inexpensive middle-class homes, mostly for people that commuted to mills in Paterson by bus and the trolley that ran on the edge of the neighborhood. Most of the houses had no garage, or a very tiny, stable-like one, at the end of an unpaved, very narrow driveway. (There are still a few houses on this block that don't have one.) In Radburn, it was assumed homeowners would have a car, where five years earlier and a mile west, just the opposite existed.   For the first time, the way houses were built reflected that people needed to drive AND walk in the same places - and that pedestrian and automobile traffic were EQUALLY important. In the 1920's, there were almost no traffic controls. No "Stop" signs on corners, no crosswalks, almost no traffic lights. You crossed a street on foot at your own peril, hoping that people had enough sense to operate their vehicles since the only driver training was cranking 'er up and getting in the seat. Traffic fatalities were huge in proportion to the number of powered vehicles. Radburn was the first time that that was taken into consideration within the context of housing. Radburn is seventy-five years old, and outside of the narrowness of the streets for modern large cars that have parking problems and turning problems on the dead ends, I can't think of any part of the plan that is out of date. It's still a desirable place to live and raise children, and enjoy green grass and recreation. Architects study the basic plans of the community and use it as a template for housing all over the world.  Radburn continues to change the human environment. That it's in our own town is what captivated me to write about it. That's why I think that it's one of the "Wonders" of Fair Lawn.  A few years ago, we took a family vacation to Nashville.  We drove down, stopping for the night in a tiny town in Virginia, 600 miles from home. We chatted with the desk clerk at the motel, and exchanged the usual pleasantries about where we were from. We told her "Fair Lawn, in Bergen County, near New York." "Is that near Radburn?" she wanted to know.   Never thought we'd be having that conversation in Troutville, VA. See Evelyn McHugh's series on the history of Radburn, starting with Planning the Perfect Community From the September 13, 2004 edition of the New Yorker Magazine   "This year marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of Radburn, New Jersey, the extraordinary utopian suburb designed by Clarence Stein and Henry Wright at the edge of Fair Lawn, in Bergen County. Radburn, which its founders billed as a new “town for the motor age,” contains relatively ordinary suburban houses, each one more or less the same as the others. But the town was laid out so that the houses turn their backs to the street, making it a service area. They face a wide, rambling greenbelt—a park, in effect. Radburn, almost alone among suburbs, manages to do what cities do, which is to emphasize public space over private space. There is a coherence to it, at no cost to the tranquil pleasures that people seek when they leave the city. Stein and Wright reinvented the idea of suburban development, and in three-quarters of a century their work hasn’t been bettered.   The Other Wonders of Fair Lawn     See the articles in previous editions on Fair Lawn's other wonders.   Parks and Recreation Programs Fair Lawn Library Kraft / Nabisco Bakery   Weir   In future editions, Fair Lawn News will publish articles on the two other Wonders of Fair Lawn.