Cranford, New Jersey is home to a diverse number of historic architectural styles, historically significant buildings, and landmarks. Structures dating from 1740 through the present can be found in a relatively small area of the township. A self-guided walking tour of Cranford architecture is available. Additionally, an audio tour of 25 historic Cranford sites, created by the Cranford Historic Preservation Advisory Board and narrated by Bernie Wagenblast, is also available. Historic sites in the township are overseen by the Cranford Historic Preservation Advisory Board, whose purpose is to identify, record and maintain a system for survey and inventory of all building sites, places and landmarks and structures of historical or architectural significance based on the Secretary of the Interior's Standards and Guidelines for Archeology and Historic Preservation. Historic houses and buildings of Cranford Crane-Phillips House The Sperry Homes Thomas Sperry and his brother, William Miller Sperry contributed to Cranford architecture including the Sperry building at North Avenue and Alden Street. Their daughters married two of the Beinecke brothers, founders of Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Droescher's Mill The Pierson House The Pierson House, also known as the Crane House is at 420 Riverside Drive. It is one of the best known houses in Cranford. Here the major clue is probably the house's proximity (like the Klein House to the Old York Road) to a major artery of colonial travel. In this case, the artery is Crane's Ford, a shallow and thus important stretch of the Rahway River. It was easily traversable on horseback during colonial days, and the Pierson House, built circa 1740, was probably put there to keep an eye on it. The Pierson house started life as a story wood structure, probably not that much different from others in town, but the original has disappeared under generations of renovations. The most recent, in 1929, restored the Pierson house to the correct time period, the middle 18th century, although on a much more grandiose scale. Inside, the original basement walls, some of the beams, and several of the pegged oak floor boards of the 1740 house remain, but on the whole, the Pierson House serves as a quintessential example of one of the unshakable laws of architecture; nothing exists in a vacuum. The Pierson house today is a private residence, owned and occupied by members of the Shanks family. Repairs to the property are underway due