What might have been: “The Town for the Motor Age’’ -- Sadolburn
If you think you know how or why Radburn was named, please contact Rick or Stephen at fjhampson@gmail.com or taylormake@gmail.com.
By Rick Hampson and Stephen Taylor
In our recent video, Historic Radburn, we repeated the conventional wisdom that the name “Radburn” is Old English for “Saddle River.’’ The name seemed apt, because the community announced in early 1928 was originally supposed to stretch from the railroad tracks to the Saddle River.
But now we wonder if that’s really where Radburn got its name.
The conventional wisdom comes from a crucial figure in the planning of Radburn: Charles Ascher, lawyer for the City Housing Corporation, which built “The Town for the Motor Age.’’
Ascher always said he chose the community’s name. Here’s the account he gave -- “for the record,’’ he said -- on Oct. 4, 1975, to mark Radburn’s addition to the National Register of Historic Places.
“Our able (CHC) public relations man, Harry Propper, set up a press conference for our president, Mr. (Alexander) Bing, to announce our intention to build a model town. That was to be on a Tuesday (Jan. 24, 1928). Suddenly, Propper realized we would have to give it a name.
“I spent the previous Saturday (before the press conference) at the New York Public Library, searching the names of the governors of New Jersey and the presidents of Princeton. The mellifluous ones like Carteret or Elizabeth had already been taken. I found the maps prepared for George Washington’s military campaign in New Jersey, but there was no human culture in our area. It was woods and marshes.
“The Saddle River ran through our town site, but there was already a Saddle River Township.’’
Finally, he said: “I found a book on English place names which said that ‘rad’ meant ‘saddle,’ so I added ‘burn’ (a river or stream) and there we were.’’
The author of the most comprehensive history of Radburn accepts this version. Daniel Schaffer, who interviewed Ascher in 1977, writes in Garden Cities for America: The Radburn Experience (1982) that Ascher picked the name.
Similarly, local historian Jane Lyle Diepeveen in her Fair Lawn: Historic Tales from Settlement to Suburb (2010) says flatly: “Radburn was the Old English translation of Saddle River.’’
There’s just one problem: in Old English, ‘rad’ didn’t mean saddle; ‘sadol’ meant saddle. If Ascher had named the new town based on actual Old English translation of Saddle River, it would have been called “Sadolburn.’’ Which sounds uncomfortable.
In Old English, in fact, ‘‘rad’’ meant “red.’’ And so if you were talking to a Londoner before 1066 and said, “Radburn,’’ he/she would have thought you meant “Red River’’ – not Saddle River.
Does the Saddle River sometimes have a reddish cast? Maybe, but that’s not Ascher’s explanation for his decision.
There is some indication that Clarence Stein, Radburn’s chief architect and planner, had his own favorite name for the new development. It was a real clunker: “Regional City.’’
On Dec. 6, 1927 – about six weeks before Radburn was announced – Stein wrote to his friend Benton MacKaye, the father of the Appalachian Trial. “We are at last starting to campaign for the Regional City,’’ Stein reported. ”It is astonishing how easily this new name for a Garden City has gone over.’’ (Gone over with whom, he didn’t say.)
Five weeks later – just two weeks before Bing’s press conference – Stein wrote a memo entitled Notes on the New Town Planned by the City Housing Corporation. He repeatedly referred to what became Radburn as ‘’the New Town’’ – thus confirming Ascher’s story that CHC waited till the eleventh hour to settle on a name for its new development in Fairlawn.
But how Ascher actually came up with “Radburn” is still a mystery.
Early Radburn
Historic footage (edited) of Radburn probably by Marjorie Sewell Cautley circa 1933. The soundtrack is added: Ethel Water's 1929 recording of Irving Berlin's Waiting at the End of the Road and Louis Armstrong's That's My Home from 1933.
Historic Radburn Virtual Tour
Historic Radburn Virtual Tour: Rick Hampson, and Steve Taylor
This is a virtual tour of historic Radburn, Fair Lawn, New Jersey. The tour includes many 1929 photographs of this National Historic Landmark. Landscape architects and urban planners Marjorie Sewell Cautley, Henry Wright, and Clarence Stein are discussed.
Contact Rick Hampson, who with Steve Taylor will be conducting walking tours of historic Radburn, at fjhampson@gmail.com .
This is a virtual tour of historic Radburn, Fair Lawn, New Jersey. The tour includes many 1929 photographs of this National Historic Landmark. Landscape architects and urban planners Marjorie Sewell Cautley, Henry Wright, and Clarence Stein are discussed.
Contact Rick Hampson, who with Steve Taylor will be conducting walking tours of historic Radburn, at fjhampson@gmail.com .