TWO summers ago, Alayne and Brian Fahrman bought an 80-year-old house in Springfield, N.J., a tidy suburb they thought would be an ideal place to start a family. One of their first nights there, the quiet was shattered, but in a good way.
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“He said, ‘Listen. I can hear crickets,’ ” she said recently, laughing. “Crickets! It was not the fire trucks and car horns we’d heard in Hoboken.”
Springfield was a much noisier place on July 23, 1780, when soldiers led by none other than George Washington turned back much larger British forces headed toward Morristown, in what turned out to be a critical battle of the Revolutionary War.
The British burned all but four houses. The Cannon Ball House, with much newer office buildings on either side, still stands, and is open occasionally, so the public can take a look at the cannonball that smashed into it.
A block to the west stands a prim Presbyterian church, its clapboard siding whitewashed, with a spire and a clock on top and the statue of a patriot out front. Springfield has moved on since the Revolution, but at a pace that is more like a stroll.
“We’re kind of a segue town,” said the township’s mayor, Bart Fraenkel (whose job is only part time). He meant that Springfield, population 14,500, does not share many of the characteristics of neighboring towns. It is more affluent than Union or Kenilworth, but less tony than Summit or Short Hills.
Although the famous Baltusrol Golf Club sits in the center of the township, Springfield is an affordable, laid-back bedroom community where residents can actually get a good night’s sleep — unless, of course, the crickets are shattering the silence.
“I’ve found Springfield to be a hidden gem,” said Joyce Bartle, a director of development for a certified financial planner who moved from Maplewood two years ago with her husband, Jeremy Siegel, into a three-bedroom condominium. “It is a town that just doesn’t get a lot of attention.”
The couple, who had a son in college at the time, bought two condo units for $700,000, did extensive renovations on both and sold the second unit late in 2006 for $330,000. They are soon going to become parents again. They considered moving, but Ms. Bartle discovered that Springfield is perfect for gardening and dog walking.
As for the Fahrmans, they paid $430,000 for their house, which is west of Springfield’s center and a 10-minute walk from the Short Hills train station.
“It’s kind of like we have the best of both worlds here,” Ms. Fahrman said. “We have a lot of space, and we have the convenience of shops and restaurants nearby.”
Now they also have a backyard for their 2-month-old daughter, Emily, to explore eventually.
WHAT YOU’LL FIND
Springfield is in northernmost Union County, about 25 miles southwest of New York. Interstate 78, which has an exit for Springfield, slices through the northern part of the township. A busy three-quarter-mile portion of Route 22 runs through the south.
Most of the western half of the five-square-mile township is taken up by Hidden Valley Park and Baltusrol Golf Club, whose stately Tudor clubhouse is off Shunpike Road.
Downtown Springfield is less than a mile from I-78.
Two avenues, Mountain and Meisel, which becomes South Springfield Avenue, run parallel to the southwest from the center of town. The neighborhoods off those two avenues are filled with split-level or ranch houses with small, well-tended front lawns.
Morris Avenue seems a good place to run errands — with a bagel shop, nail salon, dentist’s office, Irish pub, Italian restaurant and old-fashioned hardware store — but Mr. Fraenkel said it could use a face-lift. “Most of the people in town feel that is the weakest area,” he said. “We don’t want to change the integrity of the whole town. We just want to spruce it up.”
WHAT YOU’LL PAY
Of the 93 properties in Springfield listed on gsmls.com, the Garden State Multiple Listing Service’s Web site, 30 were listed at $400,000 to $499,000 and 21 at $500,000 to $599,000.
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