Cranford, NJ Homes for Sale

Cranford station, on South Avenue East, is on NJ Transit's Raritan Valley Line. NJ Transit describes weekday service to Newark Penn Station, with some trains extended to and from New York during midday and evening hours. The timetable marks those trains as a one-seat ride to Penn Station New York with no transfer; on other trips, riders change at Newark Penn. NJ Transit lists bus route 113 to the Port Authority Bus Terminal at Cranford, and local routes 59 and 66 at Union College in Cranford. By road, the Garden State Parkway runs along the township's eastern edge (interchanges 136 and 137), and Route 28 (North Avenue) crosses the center of town east to west.

Downtown Cranford, where in 1985 the township created New Jersey's first Special Improvement District; Nomahegan Park, a Union County park at 955 Springfield Avenue, opposite the UCNJ Cranford Campus; Rahway River Parkway, a Union County riverside greenway designed by the Olmsted Brothers firm in the 1920s. Its Cranford section includes Lenape, Nomahegan, Hampton, MacConnell, Hanson, Sperry and Droescher's Mill parks.; MacConnell Park (Eastman Street), a county park almost entirely encircled by the Rahway River; Cranford Canoe Club, 250 Springfield Avenue at Orange Avenue, a township-owned boathouse that rents canoes and kayaks on the Rahway River (open for the 2026 season); Droescher's Mill (built 1737), 347 Lincoln Avenue East, the last remaining mill on the Rahway River, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974; Crane-Phillips House, 124 North Union Avenue, a Victorian cottage run as a museum by the Cranford Historical Society; Crane's Ford monument, Riverside Drive at Springfield Avenue, a tablet erected by the Cranford Historical Society on July 4, 1929; UCNJ Union College of Union County, NJ, Cranford Campus, 1033 Springfield Avenue (the college's main campus).

Cranford Public Schools (formally Cranford Township Public Schools) serves PreK-12: Walnut Avenue (PreK-2), Bloomingdale Avenue (K-2), Brookside Place (K-5), Livingston Avenue (3-5), Hillside Avenue (K-8), Orange Avenue (3-8) and Cranford High School (9-12). The Lincoln School building houses the district's Cranford Achievement Programs. Saint Michael School, a Catholic school at 100 Alden Street affiliated with the Archdiocese of Newark, serves PreK through Grade 8, and UCNJ Union College has its main campus in Cranford.

The New Jersey Legislature incorporated Cranford as a township on March 14, 1871, from parts of Clark, Linden, Springfield, Union and Westfield townships. The name is said to come from the Crane family: in 1720, John Crane built mills at a ford on the Rahway River. Because the river runs through town, Cranford is informally called "The Venice of New Jersey."