The Crane-Phillips House Museum is a small Victorian cottage in the architectural style of Andrew Jackson Downing. It provides a rare glimpse of life for a modest family in the Victorian era of opulence and illustrates that period as the era of invention by way of the property’s second owners, the Phillips family. The first owners of the property were the Crane family, who were among the first settlers to cross the Rahway River and establish a homestead around 1715.

Located near the Rahway River, the center of Cranford’s history since the Lenni Lenape Indians more than a thousand years ago, the Crane-Phillips House Museum touches upon Cranford’s beginning as a community of farmers and millers in the early 18th century. It highlights the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries when Cranford and many other communities in our County and State were transforming into Victorian towns and later into the modern suburban communities of today.

There is an old country saying that “a barn is only as strong as its roof is sound.” This is also true of a house or cottage. The previous cedar shingled roof had lasted since the early 1960’s. Cedar is naturally resistant to insects, mildew, dampness, heat and cold. All of which are important qualities for a structure in a damp river environment, such as along the Rahway River in Cranford. The roof was beginning to deteriorate. Despite repeated repairs over the last five years (2010-2015), the cedar shake roof of the Crane- Phillips House Museum had continued to leak. The Cranford Historical Society applied for a 2015 Preserve Union County Grant through the Union County Historic Preservation Trustee Fund. In December 2015, the Society received the good news that they received a matching grant of $10,000.

Many thanks to Edrich Remodeling of Cranford, who expertly restored the museum roof with cedar shakes this spring. We would also like to thank our members, volunteers, donors and the Township of Cranford for their support.

The Crane-Phillips House is currently closed for the summer and will re-open again in mid- September. Check our website at www.cranfordhistoricalsociety.com in August to see our schedule of programs for the Fall.

See the article here: https://rennamedia.com/crane-phillips-house-museum-gets-a-new-roof/