The Rise of the New Towns

In 1964 Radburn, N.J., was featured in a public television program, “The Rise of the New Towns.’’ The clip here depicts “the town for the motor age’’ in the late 1930s and in the early 1960s. The ‘30s footage is from The City, a documentary made for the 1939 New York World’s Fair. The ‘60s scenes seem to have been shot specially for the program in 1964 that aired on WNET. The narrator describes Radburn as a “unique, pleasant community’’ where children can walk safely to school, yet also a “fragment” of what might have been America’s first new town -- “obscured, hemmed in by the sprawling New York metropolis.’’ There are a few errors. Radburn was founded in 1928 or 1929, not 1927. Its developer was a “limited dividend corporation,’’ not a non-profit. And its homes are clustered not around one “village green,’’ but three.