What You’ll Find

Fair Lawn occupies five square miles between the shopping malls of Paramus and the city of Paterson, to the west across the Passaic River. Route 208, a state highway, bisects Fair Lawn diagonally, and Route 4 runs through the southern portion as Broadway, in the largest of the borough’s three principal commercial districts. The others are in Radburn — which Mr. Peluso said will be rehabilitated and made more pedestrian-friendly in the coming year — and along River Road.

Cape Cods, split-levels and bi-levels abound, with newly constructed colonials mixed in. “Fair Lawn has a lot of midcentury houses with good bones,” said Paula Royak, a Fair Lawn native who works as a sales associate with Terrie O’Connor Realtors, in Ridgewood. “They’re solid, with features like brick exteriors, plaster walls, hardwood floors and steel-beam construction, and distinctive finishing touches certain builders were known for.”

What Fair Lawn lacks is Victorian architecture, so those looking for wraparound porches and other 19th-century flourishes will be disappointed. But there is charm to Radburn, created in 1928 as “a town for the motor age.” The community’s 680 homes, most single-family, are set amid cul-de-sacs, pedestrian pathways, parkland and gardens. The association fees Radburn homeowners pay on top of municipal, county and school taxes — $2,000 a year is a typical assessment — afford them the use of tennis courts, two swimming pools and summer recreation programs for children. But to maintain Radburn’s ambience, homeowners must abide by architectural rules that include restrictions on things like fence heights (not to exceed 36 inches).