Winter 2004 Edition     

Radburn -- Planning the Perfect Community   By Evelyn McHugh  (First article in a four part series)   On January 25, 1928, a headline in the New York Times Real Estate Section read:  MODEL TOWN TO RISE IN JERSEY TO MEET THE NEEDS OF THE MOTOR AGE    City Housing Corporation Buys 1005 Acres Near Paterson for Community of 25,000    It was the birth announcement for the construction of Radburn.  The previous day, Alexander M. Bing, President of the City Housing Corporation (“currently building Sunnyside Gardens in Long Island City”, per The Times) had announced plans for a new concept of the suburban community, a place where people would live in a park-like setting instead of the traditional suburban city block. Residents would be free to commute – or work in modern businesses in their home town.    With access to trains on the Erie Railroad, within walking distance of their new homes, they could make a convenient trip to New York City. For those choosing not to commute to the city, an entire village of homes and roads and pedestrian paths would be built to accommodate the increasing numbers of families with the economic means to own a family automobile to get to work within their own town. The village would provide businesses to service the local needs of its residents, and, it was expected, to employ many of them.   Apartments would be built for those unable to afford a house at present, and a range of homes and home sizes would make it possible for those moving up (or down) in the world to stay in the same community.   The children of the new homeowners would walk to school without ever encountering an automobile or a busy street corner. Nearby stores were a few minutes walk along grassy footpaths. A community center would serve as town hall and meeting place. And, for those who preferred to motor, paved roads made it quick and easy to get from the home garage to scenic tours of the countryside along streets designed as part of this new concept – a “parkway” designed with wide lanes and grassy islands to control the flow of traffic.    -------------------------------- Western and northern Bergen County in 1928 was at the turning point between farmland and suburbs. A plan was in place for the construction of a still to be named bridge from the Palisades in Fort Lee to upper Manhattan, and for an access roadway from the bridge to Arcola at the Old Mill (now southwestern Paramus) which would connect and extend an existing route to the major industries in Paterson. A highway from the Lincoln Tunnel construction project was to extend to the major north-south roadways of Routes 1 and 9, and intersect with a series of “ring roads” designed along the “parkway” concept. One of these was to run from Lyndhurst in southern Bergen to Hackensack, and, possibly, to the new highway from the Hudson bridge. These roads were to be designated S-2, S-3 and S-4. Or, as we know them, Route 17 to Maywood, Route 3 to Clifton and Route 4 to the interchange with lower Saddle River Road.     There was enormous public interest in these new roads that would serve the residents of the new city “for the Motor Age”. The people wanted roads. They demanded roads. They wrote letters to the Editor, the Governors of New York and New Jersey and approved higher taxes to get them. They loved the car as much as they hated the trolley and the horse bus of their parent’s generation. They wanted to go where ever and when ever they desired with as little discomfort or restraint as possible. The automobile was recreation and novelty to those who first purchased them, but, by 1925, it had come to mean freedom from the schedule of others and a means to get to jobs beyond the reach of the train and trolley. The entire culture of the United States had begun to be transformed to the demands of automobiles. In less than ten years, the first drive-in would be born. Already, the weekend trolley ride that had given birth to places like Palisades Amusement Park and Coney Island had been replaced with family rides “to the mountains” and Sunday afternoon luncheons at little “Roadhouses”. Boyfriends of “flappers” – wild young women with bobbed hair and short skirts – took mild little Model T’s and turned them into reckless “Hot Rods” for wild rides to the country in search of sin and alcohol. The death toll from poor roads, poor drivers, and few safety controls led to articles on automobile reform and urban planning, all in their infancy by 1928.    The good times of the Roaring Twenties drew people to live and work in New York City and the suburbs, and the demand for places for these new inter-country immigrants to live was enormous, exceeded only by the need for them to get to their dwellings and employers. Local roads were widened and paved where they could be, but it wasn’t enough. Older towns like Newark, Jersey City and Paterson had been designed with homes and business structures close together to take advantage of scarce land. This meant cars were traveling in the space designed for buggys. Car storage in cities was make-do with converted stables or car barns charging high fees. As a result, motor vehicles were parked everywhere, end to end on every possible inch of street and grass.   The architects of Radburn had a better idea. Build a city so that it would be free of all the problems associated with the aesthetic conflict between the need for paved roads and land for housing and parking. Build it so no child would have to cross a street to go to school or to a playground. Cluster housing to leave more open space. And, most important, build in all the things that are part of an entire community, the social needs as well as the services.     Alexander Bing was not new to the idea. In 1924 he had founded The City Housing Corporation in order to take full advantage of new development law. A member of the radical-thinking Regional Planning Association of America, he was a developer and promoter of the concept of “garden cities”, where buildings were congregated in order to leave as much of the site available for a park-like landscaping. Sunnyside Gardens, the first project of Bing, architect Clarence Stein and landscape architect Henry Wright to incorporate aspects of the garden plan, contains many elements that would later be included in Radburn. Built in Queens, it featured semi-attached townhomes and apartments in groups filling entire city blocks. Unlike traditional density housing, where the idea was to cram as many buildings and tenants as the land could hold, Sunnyside’s buildings circled the edges of the block, leaving courtyards of green space and pathways between buildings. But it was built in the already-developed land of Queens, so it needed to conform to a street grid already laid out. Radburn had no such restrictions. It was farmland, open and uncrossed by roadways. Here, the streets could be made to fit the construction, and not the other way around.   In the plans designed by Stein, Wright and others, Radburn homes would be divided into areas grouped together off “highways” by way of short “parkways” in order to speed the flow of traffic and improve access. Pedestrian traffic would not mingle with automobiles.  As Mr. Bing explained in the announcement in the Times: “…the houses will face on individual gardens from which will lead a path leading directly to a parkway. Homes for 600 families will be grouped around each of these parkways, which will be about a half-mile long and about the width of a city block and in which will be located a school, playgrounds tennis courts and community rooms.”  “In this way the cultural and social life of these 600 families will centre about the central park space. The town will be made up of a number of these units with connecting parkways.”   As stated in the New York Times, the cost of the land for this town was 2 million dollars. The value of the completed development was estimated at 50 to 60 million dollars. As completed, Radburn would become the largest city in Bergen County, where most towns in western Bergen had just a few thousand inhabitants, more than outnumbered by livestock. This would be facilitated by building superblocks, one area at a time, as houses were sold, until the huge tract of land was filled. Using early techniques borrowed from Henry Ford to speed construction by uniform architecture with simple differentiation from house to house, on the day of the announcement, it was expected that several hundred houses would be ready for occupation at the end of 1929.    Continued in Part 2: Construction Begins   Thanks to Jarvis Rodriguez for the photos.