And now for something completely different -- a city neighborhood where peace and harmony rule, where rules are obeyed and some fantasies come true, i.e.: Lawns you don't have to mow, stately trees pruned for you, gutters cleaned on schedule and a staff of handymen who fix what's broken.

Andy Starnes, Post-Gazette Sixteen-year resident and village board president Ann Thalimer stands in front of her home, holding a photo of her unit from the original open house at Chatham Village in Mt. Washington in 1932. Click photo for larger image.

Chatham Village residents describe their Mount Washington community as if this were still the era when men wore hats to work and kids defended their clubhouses with toy guns.

Architect David Vater, by all accounts the go-to guy for village history, called it "a unified campus," and added, in droll understatement, "for city living, I'll take it."

The 73-year-old planned community -- secluded and contained by design -- puts on plays, holds potluck dinners and takes comfort from a community rule book. Residents save wear and tear on the police to such a degree that one officer who enters reports said she had not heard of the village's two interior streets.

"Chatham Village is world-famous but of course no one in Pittsburgh has heard of it," said Franklin Toker, an architectural historian and author of "Pittsburgh: An Urban Portrait."

Although many have heard of it, its press is as quiet as it is. Getting National Historic Landmark status last month was the biggest news it has generated in ages.

It got much attention in its early years as a prototype of the British Garden City movement, an industrial-age aesthetic that prescribed a country haven in the city, isolated from its wretched overcrowding, pollution, noise and ugliness. It was Pittsburgh's first all-gas community, and its utilities are buried. It was a model for city planners, architects and pioneers of subsidized housing policy. Its early residents were working-class renters.

Its strongest critic has been Jane Jacobs, a time-honored guru of healthy urban communities. In her classic book, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961)," she criticized the village for being insular, homogeneous and "boring."

"There is no public life here, in any city sense," she wrote, describing the village as "a sheltered 'togetherness' world."

With their backs to Bigham Street, Virginia Avenue and two interior, private streets, the compact red-brick row houses -- 197 units, all very similar -- were built in the Georgian Colonial Revival style, elegant for being modest and simple. They are arranged in three groupings, each with a common green.

Slender pathways take you past perfectly clipped hedge rows, up and down little stone stairways, past stone walls and pocket gardens and through archways, evoking a fairy-tale setting. Of three garden follies, built like child-sized shelters, one is round like a smokehouse with a conical roof and a cupola on top that serves as a birdhouse.

The two words that come to mind, besides adorable, are English village.

On 46 acres in 1932, the Buhl Foundation began building this legacy of Henry Buhl Jr., who had left $15 million "to help benefit the people of the city" at a time when substandard housing was one of Pittsburgh's worst problems, said Mr. Vater. The foundation bought the Thomas Bigham mansion, now the village's community meeting place, and hired two notable New York City planners, Clarence Stein and Henry Wright, to design the village.

The "new" part was completed in 1936, and in the 1950s, the foundation built a 19-unit apartment building across Bigham. Almost 30 of its acres are wooded trails, playgrounds, ball fields, tennis courts and a picnic area.

Chatham Village still embraces income diversity, having a significant number of retirees on pensions, but that's where the diversity ends. A handful of people of color is too few, some residents say. However, in 1960, when the residents went together to buy the village, Mr. Vater said, "we adopted a non-discrimination policy in writing." The new resident cooperative also required that people buy or move, said village manager Connie Kaiser.

Residents become members of the cooperative when they buy in -- with houses typically selling now for between $80,000 and $200,000-plus, she said. Each month, they pay additionally -- from $350 to $700-- for the caretaker services, which include a night watchman.

As for rules: If you have kids, you have to take their toys in before 5 p.m. You have to take your grill in as soon as it cools. If the grounds committee sees something it deems tacky, the offender can be reported. You have to get permission to add a patio. Awnings must be canvas and the same shade of green. One bird feeder per property. No dogs. Cats must stay in. Window air conditioners must be removed by Oct. 31.

You can sell your house, but the housing committee has to approve the buyer. Ms. Kaiser said she doesn't believe anyone has ever been evicted and nobody can remember the last, loud, after-midnight party, if there ever was one.

J.J. Bosley, a resident since 1972 and a CPA., rents an office beside the village management office on Bigham Street. He and his family were on a waiting list to buy after a resident told him about the village. "It's not just an architectural delight; there are a lot of good people here," he said. "We have solid friendships, and people work together and help each other."

It's the kind of place people get attached to, about which they struggle to find anything negative to say.

One drawback, said Ann Thalimer, the village's board president, "is that we don't have as many kids as we used to." In 1950, there were 250 children; today, about 50.

"Occasionally, someone tries to steal a car," said Vater.

Allen Benton, who grew a World War I peace garden on the village site when he was 5, worked as a village groundskeeper from 1936 until 1978. The day after he retired, he missed it so much he returned to live in a village apartment. Residents he looked after now look after him. They're celebrating his 92nd birthday on Halloween.

"They won't let me do heavy work anymore," said Mr. Benton. "They took my snow shovel away from me."

"But he still helps us find leaks in the water lines," said Mr. Bosley.

"I don't think there is a downside," said Sarah Tencza, "except I wish I didn't have to drive out of the city to do a lot of my shopping."

At 39, Ms. Tancza, one of the younger residents, grew up in the village and her parents still live there. She rented in Aspinwall for a while, but when she wanted to buy a house, she said, "I thought, 'Go back to the village.' "

For Patty Henderson, another relative youngster at 42, the selling point was the services, since she found townhouse prices comparable in other parts of the city. "I had to decide if I wanted to do lawn care and snow removal, and no, I didn't."

The rule book turned her off at first, she said, "but when you sit down and read it, the whole point of a cooperative is being respectful of your neighbors."