Norman Rockwell, meet the 'burbs.

        In a first for Greater Cincinnati, Ryan Homes is constructing neighborhoods in Lebanon, Columbia Township and Centerville that veer sharply from modern subdivision style.

        Houses will sit close together and nearly on top of sidewalks. Yards will be tiny and porches large. Instead of driveways, residents will use alleys to enter back-facing garages.

        Gas lamps will line the streets. White picket fences will border the lawns. Ryan is even installing mailboxes in pairs, so neighbors will be more likely to chat.

Neo-traditional homes line a street in a new subdivision in Centerville. (Brandi Stafford photo) | ZOOM |

        This aesthetic of the past — a style known as neo-traditionalism — arrives here 15 years after the prototype emerged in Seaside, Fla. That community is so deliberately charming that it served as a set for the 1998 movie The Truman Show, which starred Jim Carrey as a man trapped in a too-perfect town.

        Over the last decade, other neo-traditional communities have sprouted in the South and Northeast, but the trend is just now hitting the Tristate.

        In Lebanon and Columbia Township, (next to Mariemont), Ryan is about to start construction of 100 homes. Fourteen neo-traditionals already have been built and sold in Centerville's Yankee Trace subdivision just north of Warren County.

        The Williams family of four moved this week from their 60-year-old house in Centerville to one that merely looks old.

        “I love the charm of older homes, but I'm so tired,” says Cindy Williams, an interior designer in Centerville. “They're money pits. We're all so busy, and I just couldn't do it anymore. I just want my life to be simple.”

        Simplicity, charm, a sense of community — in the haze of memory, Main Street U.S.A. had it all. The Pittsburgh-based Ryan Homes is banking on that nostalgia to attract empty-nesters, single professionals and career couples without children.

Cindy Williams chose her home because it gave her old-fashioned style with modern conveniences. | ZOOM |

        The formula already has worked for Ryan in suburban Maryland, where it built about 80 neo-traditionals two years ago.

        “We were the first national builder brave enough to bring it to the Midwest,” says Paul Wishnok, a Ryan sales representative in Centerville. “People are slow to change. It's certainly a new concept.”

        Other builders agree that Ryan Homes and Great Traditions, the developer overseeing the Centerville and Lebanon sites, are blazing a new trail.

        “This is the first I know of in this area,” said Butler County develop ment director Mike Juengling, who saw a neo-traditional community in Madison, Wis., last year.

        Some are confident the product will find a market here. Neo-traditionalism may even be an antidote to sprawl, because the style is especially well-suited to vacant land in historic communities like Mariemont. Building in old towns reduces the pressure to expand at the borders, says Jay Buchert, a long-time Cincinnati developer.

        “I think they're on the cutting edge of what a lot of people want,” says Mr. Buchert, citing soaring property values in quaint neighborhoods like Hyde Park.

        But others are skeptical. The neo-traditional trend and its companion, new urbanism, romanticize a past that most homebuyers aren't interested in repeating, they say.

        “We're not doing it,” said Bob Schroder, vice president of Arlinghaus Builders in Northern Kentucky. “Basically we're not sure at this point if they would sell.

        “All the studies that we see say that people want to live in the suburban house with the big yard, two-car garage. The typical, year 2001 subdivision is exactly that.”

        This debate over retro-towns is part of a larger tradition: America's love-hate relationship with its own innovations.

        The suburbs have been enormously popular. New Census figures show how much: As people flocked to new homes, Warren County grew by 39 percent over the last decade and Boone County, Ky., by 46 percent. Meanwhile, the cities of Cincinnati and Dayton lost population.

        Naturally, a backlash is in full swing.

        Books like The Geography of Nowhere portray the suburbs as culturally bereft, car-dependent wastelands where neighbors can only gaze upon each other's ugly garages. City planners speak critically of graceless shopping centers and “cookie-cutter” homes.

        The onslaught rankles people like Dan Dressman, executive vice president of the Home Builders Association of Northern Kentucky.

        His organization isn't opposed to neo-traditionalism: “We think it's a great concept as an alternative,” he says. But he rejects the notion that suburbia is faceless and fake.

        “People who live in those suburbs will tell you otherwise — that they do have relationships with people in the neighborhood,” he says.

        Nevertheless, Ryan Homes' new venture clearly plays to the contrary view.

        “It's about being neighbors again,” says the company's literature on Georgetwon Commons, its neo-traditional development in Centerville's Yankee Trace.

        Explaining the paired mailboxes, sales representative Paul Wishnok says, “We really want them to focus on community — neighbors actually talking to neighbors, not just wav ing.”

        Residents, however, expressed more enthusiasm for the street's appearance.

        “It looks like a little, old-fashioned neighborhood,” says Nancy Farkas, a single real estate agent who moved in four months ago.

        Like the homes of yesteryear, these have hardwood floors, oak railings and nine-foot ceilings. But other features, such as large bathrooms and walk-in closets, are thoroughly modern.

        “The idea of having to renovate an old bathroom, break down the wall to try to make it big, doesn't appeal to me,” Ms. Farkas says.

        Cindy Williams, the street's newest arrival, says the typical suburban home isn't for her. Great rooms with cathedral ceilings are difficult to decorate, she says.

        “I like houses with rooms in them, that create warmth and coziness,” she says.

        She so longed for a compromise — old-fashioned style with modern convenience — that she and her husband even visited Celebration, Fla., the Walt Disney Co.'s neo-traditional experiment in Orlando.

        Then one day, Ms. Williams was visiting a client's home in Yankee Trace when she happened to look out the window. Across a lake, she saw a row of homes with picket fences and generous porches.

        “Oh my goodness,” she thought. “That's it.”
       

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