to flood damage from Hurricane Irene. Norris Oakey House The Norris-Oakey House, also known as the Dunham-Oakey House, stands at 1119 Orange Avenue. First built in 1750, and then in 1820 single-handedly transformed into the best surviving example of Cranford's first definitive architecture, the Federal style. The windows tell the story here. These are the smaller, squatter ones of the left hand side which remain from the original East Jersey Cottage. Imagine the far right-hand one is the door. When the house was enlarged, the old door became a window and a new door, probably like this one, complete with a row of Federal-style ornamental sidelights, was added. The taller, more elegant windows, here on the 1820 addition, begin to look like ones on fashionable houses being built in the larger cities and towns of the new republic. So to keep up with what of the Federal style has trickled down to this predominately rural area, the old side gets another full story and a half, as shown by the knee windows under the eaves. Speaking of eaves, they are a Federal trait as are the ornamentations underneath called dentils, although these here are reproductions. The overall effect is a bit more sophisticated, a bit more classical, than the humble cottages and farmhouses in the area. Carried over from England in the books and works of architects Robert and John Adam in the late 18th century, Federalism takes its cues from buildings of ancient Pompeii which had just been excavated during the Adams' time. It is characterized by an imposing rigidity, relieved here and there by curves and a certain airiness not found in earlier high-styled buildings of the Georgian period. The trickling-down effect of any style leads to the term vernacular, so while although the Norris-Oakey House is hardly a triumph of textbook Federalism, it is a good rendering of what a few 1820 people out in the country, with their ears to the ground could come up with. The Vreeland House The Vreeland House stands at 306 Lincoln Avenue East on the route of the Old York Road in Cranford. It was constructed around 1770, maybe earlier, as a simple one-room wooden structure with a large hearth. The house was subsequently enlarged in a series of building campaigns until c. 1840 when it was doubled in size and faced in brick, evidently as a wedding present to the