Radburn

Radburn, NJ became a National Historic Landmark Site in 2005. It was planned in the late 1920's by Clarence Stein and Henry Wright as a model city, after the English Garden City model of Ebenezer Howard. The plan called for a town of about 30,000 inhabitants, with mixed housing, industry and farming. The City Housing Corparation started construction in 1929. Unfortunately, the stockmarket crash and following depression caused it to go bankrupt, after only a small part was completed. However, the completed part is still functioning as originally intended.

In this website I will attempt to reconstruct the history and population of Radburn in the early years. My sources are the 1930 and 1940 census, city directories (1931-1973) and newspaper accounts and obituaries.

There are countless volumes written about Radburn, all architecture students study the Radburn idea, Radburn gets visitors from all over the world. A Google search on Radburn turns up 35,000 hits!

The way to navigate the site is to use the search engine. You can search by street and house number (house number is given name, street is last name) or by occupant. You can use the wildcard * to replace one or more letters. If you search on occupant, the result will lead you to one or more addresses.

A Map of Radburn.

Radburn in the Headlines 1929-1931