Radburn, NJ has just become a Historic Landmark Site. 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.

A Map of Radburn.
An introduction to Radburn from the Radburn website.

In this website I will attempt to reconstruct the history and population of Radburn in the early years. My sources are the 1930 census, city directories and newspaper accounts. 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!

For navigating around the site, please remember the following:
Each house is treated as a person, given name is house number, streetname is last name.

The directory index page links to both numerical and alphabetical listings for the directories and the census.

Radburn in the Headlines 1929-1931