I would love to have good addresses for all of the above parks to go and visit them. Many of them are not listed on the town website with good addresses, individuals who have lived in Fair Lawn all their lives might know where the parks are, but those new to town often have no idea. I also would make a poll of best park to take your kids to. My favorite is Gregory park because it is a bit hidden behind houses and it has nice playground equipment for young and older kids.

Aren't they all beautiful-----?

So many parks in Radburn to choose from.... Too bad we can't pick more than 1.

Being "Brokedale park" is "disabled" and was discriminated in this poll, it looks like the most neglected park, "Brokedale park" was omitted from the parks to choose from, probably because it's the most poorly maintained and the apparatus was burned down by juveniles this past summer. Weeds growing everywhere, non sufficient garbage receptacles, no walkways, poor landscape will never get "Brokedale park" on any survey. The poll should say "Which park does the borough of Fair Lawn maintain better"? 300k proposed for a skatepark and the borough can't properly maintain existing parks!

Radburn park? Are us proles really allowed to visit there? Aren't they "Private"?

Radburn B park is the best!

Jen, in regard to Radburn being built out of a college project, do you have a source for that information or is it just something you've heard over the years? Also do you have the original plans for Radburn that show Daily Field was to have houses? I've been hired by a publisher to write a book on Fair Lawn and I would love to have your source information.

Ya gotta love how a simple, harmless survey about parks turns into a conversation about Daly Field and that Radburn residents are "snobs". I live in Radburn and I am very proud to raise my kids in a community that cares about maintaining parks and playgrounds, where people volunteer their time to help run successful social events and where neighbors can be counted on to be there for one another. Our parks are privately maintained but they are open for all people to enjoy, both residents and non-residents. If expecting people to treat our property respectfully makes us, in Sue M's opinion, "snobs", then perhaps that's not really an insult after all. When I visit Berdan Grove park and throw my trash away in the trash can, I'm being very snobbish. When I pick up litter at the Gregory Park softball field after coaching girl's softball, well there goes that snobbish behavior again. I suppose I just have high expectations that individuals will respect one another's property and would treat others the way they would like to be treated. Gosh. What high falutin' snobbery.

Michael, as a 50-year Radburn resident I agree with you 1000%!

Gregory Park?

Cornell - talk to Mrs. Dipeveen. She can put you in contact with me. I wrote a series of articles on Radburn for Phil Plotch's old Fair Lawn News website and still have most of the reseach articles from the NY Times as PDF's if you would like them. Jen knows about as much about the history of her alleged neighborhood as she knows about supermarkets.

Radburn was built by City Housing Corporation, a firm led by developer Alexander Bing who hired architects Clarence Stein and Henry Wright to build a planned community in what was then a farming community consisting mainly of large tracts owned by the decendents of Dutch settlers who produced vegetables, dairy products and fruit mostly for markets in Paterson, Newark and New York.

There were no "class of college architects". The board members of City Housing included Eleanor Roosevelt (who was the wife of the then Governor of NY), members of the Borg family (publishers of the Hackensack Record), and a large group of socially prominent New Yorkers who invested with the idea of providing homes and planned communities for the social good of many who were then living in tenements and crowded housing for their jobs in New York City because of a serious shortage of housing, The other development also built by City Housing is Sunnyside in Queens, designed as a mixture of houses and garden apartments, a new concept for housing in that era.

Radburn was originally intended to be the size of a suburban town. The area now known as the Hayward Tract was built to help provide jobs for the residents of Radburn, with the land that became Daly Field also designated for industrial development - not housing or parkland - due to the industrial uses that were already adjacent to it, including a lumberyard and a brickworks along the Erie Railroad right of way. Archery Plaza was originally used for - duh - archery, and the land where stores now sit across from both sides of the Radburn building was to be used as playing fields, a community garden, and a limited number of small shops in the case of the block between Warren and Fair Lawn Ave. A Standard Oil service station, first Esso, then Exxon, has existed on the corner of Plaza Road and Fair Lawn Avenue since the time of the start of construction of Radburn, circa 1929, and pictures of the original station are in the National Archives WPA project which documented "Radburn - A Town for the Motor Age" in 1935. That was the slogan used by City Housing in sales brochures for their Radburn project.

After the parent company all but ceased to exist in 1937, unbuilt but owned lots were sold off between Plaza Road and the tracks along Fair Lawn Avenue, where the shopping center that now includes Deals is located. At the time, there was talk of selling off Daly Field, but the existing Radburn Association trustees chose to dedicate it as parkland instead.

JEN, your posts are very amusing. I'm glad you're neither a snob nor a racist, no matter how you come across. But, could you please explain to me how the architects had to leave for the war effort? It's my understanding that Radburn began in 1928 and went bankrupt in 1933. WWI ended in 1918 and WWII didn't begin until 1941. Why did the real architects leave to fight the Nazis, and what special skills did these architects have to fight these Nazis before they even came in to power?

Bellair~
At the end of 1928, party membership was recorded at 130,000. In March 1929, Erich Ludendorff represented the Nazi party in the Presidential elections. He gained 280,000 votes (1.1%), and was the only candidate to poll fewer than a million votes. The battles on the streets grew increasingly violent. After the Rotfront interrupted a speech by Hitler, the SA marched into the streets of Nuremberg and killed two bystanders. In a tit-for-tat action, the SA stormed a Rotfront meeting on August 25 and days later the Berlin headquarters of the KPD itself. In September Goebbels led his men into Neukölln, a KPD stronghold, and the two warring parties exchanged pistol and revolver fire.
The German referendum of 1929 was important as it gained the Nazi Party recognition and credibility it never had before.
The year 1930 resulted in more deaths in political violence than the previous two years combined.

Nothing less impressive than a fool with internet access. And no concept of the actual timeline of events.

BB - hope you learned about the American "war effort" from a lesson on incorrect copying and pasting of Wilkie articles about pre-fascist Germany. Guess she hasn't had time to google the reason she made me laugh out loud this morning. If she's a product of the Fair Lawn School system, I may have to start home schooling.

The US only provided support in the form of Leand/Lease to the UK prior to entering WW II. No one from Radburn (or Fair Lawn) went to support the "war effort."

Question: Are those people from "Across the river" allowed in the Radburn Parks?

well Cornell, See what you get for starting a poll??? :)

Come now! This JEN isn't for real, is he/she?? Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think Nuremberg , city of my birth would be "paired" with Radburn, where I've lived the last 50 years!

It's about the parks, people! How 'bout them parks in Fair Lawn! Beautiful, plentiful and ready for the picnic-going, dog-loving, frisbee-playing, fresh-air-breathing residents to enjoy. Yay parks! Such a wonderful thing to have in our area. Now, please. Go outside and visit some of them. Live life. Do something other than throw insults on community news site. Have some fun. For God's sake, please. I implore you all. Go outside and have fun!

Amen, Michael!!

Radburn B Park is the winner of the poll.

I am having fun. Although I have to say there are aspects of this that are so appalling it makes me wonder if there are any educated people under 40 still around to understand that what is online does not replace actual research.

Mike, the "original architect" of Radburn never lived in Radburn. First, because he was married to actress Aileen MacMahon and divided his time between an apartment in NYC when she was on Broadway, and a home in the Hollywood Hills when she was working in films. And Radburn did not allow Jews to buy or live there. Clarence Stein had two assistants that worked with him on Radburn, but neither one of them ever lived there. The only quasi-military project he did was to design housing for the Brooklyn Navy Yard circa 1942, some of which was never built because the military had some issue with the design and did not give the project full approval.

If anyone admires the design of the parks in Radburn, Henry Wright should get all the credit for the layout, as the landscape architect. He not only designed the layout of Sunnyside Gardens to use plantings of appropriate mature growth sizes to screen the tenants from their close housing next to the Queens streets, he laid out the meandering paths, the location of most of the play area with the idea that parents would supervise children and needed appropriate sight lines, kids would need to negotiate their way to schools safely - all things that he repeated in his work for Radburn.

Its so funny to me that you all are the ones being deleted for harassment left and right. Really it's hilarious! I had heard there were some "people" on Patch and ruining it for everyone else, constantly attacking....now I see... but I think it's funny. Are you guys your only friends...You are aren't you! LOL Have a nice life...but I am sure you don't know how to. GOOD RIDDANCE!!!

So, superior being, you think that I was "deleted because of harassment"?

>I< deleted my real name because it was being used to gather information to harass me. Zak and just about everyone on here knows who I really am. Thankfully, you and your fictional universe do not.

Just because I need a laugh, did you ever figure out what Henry Wright did as part of your "war effort" when he completed the A, B and R park?

During the Civil War, no doubt....

Wow! This is quite a saga.

I have lived in Radburn for most of the time since 1931, studied it in architecture school, have written two gradutate planning school (Columbia) papers about aspects of it, and have read Clarence Stein's "Toward New Towns for America" and Daniel Schaffer's "Garden Cities for America - the Radubrn Experience. Still,I have not researched some aspects of it as thoroughly as 'Deleted'. She is correct that building stopped in 1933 (except for a few houses on Owen Ave. that I climbed on when they were being built later in the 30s). Bulding resumed for a few streets about 1939-40 in A Block and the south side. I lived in Radburn during WWII. Lots of residents went to war - didn't hear about a Radburn architect. Herbert Emmerich was one of the Radbur architects. His relatives, the Emerizys (spelling?) lived on Plaza Road, but I don't know if Emmerich ever did. I have been told that Henry Wright once lived in the Abbott Court, but have not checked the records to tell if this was true. I am pretty sure that he was not here when WWII started. (Note: the draft started before US was in the war.)

I would be interested in who Jen's friend was and who the architect was. Does she remember?

We should ask a Radburn Trustee, but I was told that since many of the park walks were dedicated to the Borough, they are free to everyone, but the walks only. However, since a street can be kept private only if it is closed off once a year, maybe this applies to parks also. I am not a lawyer.

It was not Radburn residents who agreed to sell Daly Field, but the Board of Trustees, so why is Jen mad at us? About half of the residents opposed the agreement, many still do. Daly Field was aquired by Radburn when the community lost Plaza Field, across from the Plaza Bldg. Plaza Field was used for baseball, football and other activities. Daly Field property was originally planned for industry, never for housing (look at the original plans). It was named for Charley Daly, who was in charge of keeping up our parks.

Jane, I had no idea Emmerich was related to the Emerizys? Wow. Thanks for that info. The Emerizys were very good friends of ours and with Jeans death a few years ago, it left me as the longest residing person on my block. Which did not make me happy. LOL.

Jane: You know me - I'm the person that helped you researched the old train station photograph that turned out to belong to a university that wanted way too much money for you to use it in the book, and passed along a whole bunch of old photos I had.

Henry Wright never lived in Radburn, unless he kept an apartment for a short time. But the reason he never got involved in the "war effort"? He died in 1936 of a sudden heart attack, with absolutely no warning. Stein described it in his papers as one of the most devestating loses in his life, and blamed it on the stress of dealing with the financial failures at Radburn and Sunnyside.

Interesting back-and-forth here. Sorry I missed it earlier, I must have been busy that week. I'm not sure that @Jen had any nefarious purpose, other than a snippet of history that wasn't referenced properly.

The eventual deal with Daly Field was that pieces of the property owned and contracted by Radburn were still being disposed of in court up to the war years, and Plaza Field (the Grand Union site) was "traded" for Daly Field. Guess which side got the better end of that bargain? Archery was purchased for $100 and deed-restricted for recreation.

Stein did consult with Rex Tugwell, a Columbia professor who led the Resettlement Administration for FDR and built the three Greenbelt towns - Greenbelt MD, Greenhills OH and Greendale WI. (A fourth, Jersey Homesteads, now Roosevelt NJ, followed a similar plan but was not fully developed.) Perhaps that was the source of Jen's original reference.

es, rca pres-elect