Radburn, New Jersey

Radburn, New Jersey
A diagram showing the street network structure of Radburn and its nested hierarchy. Separate pedestrian paths run through the green spaces between the culs-de-sac and through the central green spine (the shaded area was not built).
Radburn
Location of Radburn in Bergen County Inset: Location of county within the state of New Jersey
Radburn
Radburn (New Jersey)
Radburn
Radburn (the United States)
Coordinates: 40°56′33″N 74°07′00″W / 40.94250°N 74.11667°W / 40.94250; -74.11667
Country United States
State New Jersey
CountyBergen
BoroughFair Lawn
Elevation
95 ft (29 m)
Time zoneUTC−05:00 (Eastern (EST))
  Summer (DST)UTC−04:00 (EDT)
GNIS feature ID879582
Radburn
A Radburn cul-de-sac
LocationFair Lawn, New Jersey
Built1928
ArchitectClarence Stein, Henry Wright
Architectural styleColonial Revival, Tudor Revival
NRHP reference No.75001118
NJRHP No.482
Significant dates
Added to NRHPApril 16, 1975
Designated NHLDApril 5, 2005
Designated NJRHPOctober 15, 1974

Radburn is an unincorporated community located within the borough of Fair Lawn in Bergen County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey.

Radburn was founded in 1929 as "a town for the motor age". Its planners, Clarence Stein and Henry Wright, and its landscape architect Marjorie Sewell Cautley aimed to incorporate modern planning principles, which were then being introduced into England's Garden Cities, following ideas advocated by urban planners Ebenezer Howard, Sir Patrick Geddes and Clarence Perry. Perry's neighborhood unit concept was well-formulated by the time Radburn was planned, being informed by Forest Hills Gardens, Queens, New York City (1909–1914), a garden-city development of the Russell Sage Foundation.

Radburn was explicitly designed to separate traffic by mode, with a pedestrian path system that does not cross any major roads at grade level. Radburn introduced the largely residential "superblock" and is credited with incorporating some of the earliest culs-de-sac in the United States. It was designated a National Historic Landmark District in 2005, in recognition of its history in the development of the garden city movement in the 20th century.