Rememembering when Old Greenwich and Riverside were filled with successful, modest people like this

20 Meadow place, Old Greenwich, is new to the market today (listed by Raveis’ Liz Smith), and priced at $4.150 million. Built in 1935, 3 bedrooms, 3 baths, 2,286 sq. ft. but — and this explains the price — direct waterfront, with dock.

Owned for the past 50 years by the late Graham Whitehead, and his wife of 67 years, Gay, Mr. Whitehead retired in 1990 as President of Jaguar North America. Born in England in 1928, he and his family moved to the United States in 1958, and stayed. He died in 2015, aged 86.

He was from a time when even top corporate executives mowed their own lawn (well, many of them did, or they told their kids to do it), walked to the train, drove old cars, and lived lifestyles and in houses that weren’t remarkably different from their neighbors. Riverside/Old Greenwich comprised a wide range of people in different income brackets and in different occupations, from policemen to teachers, to writers and musicians, to some of the best-paid corporate executives, and it all blended well. There are, of course, still a large number of very nice people here, but the houses are bigger, some of the egos are larger, and the mix is more homogenized, even, perhaps, a tad bland.

So it goes.