Cranford is a township in Union County, New Jersey, home to about 24,074 people across 4.8 square miles. Its ZIP code is 07016.
Homes sold for a median of $469 per square foot in the three months ending August 2026, a seller’s market.
Each card is that ZIP code’s whole market, including any part outside Cranford. Seller’s market: under 4 months of supply; buyer’s market: over 6. Methodology
Cranford takes its name from the Crane family, who reached Elizabethtown in 1715 and put up a gristmill and sawmill on the Rahway River in 1716, near the river crossing that became known as Crane's Mills. The area stayed a farming district of East Jersey for more than a century. The township was formally established on March 14, 1871, a date it marked with a 150th-anniversary quilt now hanging in the Municipal Building.
The railroad line through the center, where the present Cranford Hotel went up beside the tracks in 1893, helped turn the riverside village into a commuter suburb. The river shaped its identity: river carnivals with lantern-lit canoe parades began in 1886, and the town promoted itself as the Venice of New Jersey. The last of the early pageants was held in 1928, and the event was revived in 1961 at Nomahegan Park. The Cranford Canoe Club, formalized in 1907, was bought by the township in 1990.
Several landmarks from those years still stand. The Crane-Phillips House, a cottage begun around 1842 and remodeled in the Victorian manner after 1867, was placed on the National and State Registers in 1997. The Cranford Hotel dates to 1893 and the Cranford Theater to 1926. The railroad tracks through the center were raised onto an embankment around 1930, when the street-level crossing was removed.
Cranford's center is a downtown on both sides of the raised rail line, with North Avenue as the main shopping street and South Avenue across the tracks. The Municipal Building is at 8 Springfield Avenue, and the Rahway River winds through town close to the commercial blocks. Condominiums and townhouses near the station, including a section called English Village, add apartment-style options to a housing stock that is mostly single-family.
Locally used section names include Roosevelt Manor, one of the earliest developments of the 1890s, in the north near Memorial Park and the river; Fairview Manor, also from the 1890s, near Nomahegan Park; Lincoln Park, a small area within walking distance of the station with a mix of ranches and older Victorians; and Indian Village on the south side between the Garden State Parkway and the Clark border, reached from Raritan Road. Its original subdivision, Sunny Acres, was built largely with Sears mail-order kit houses, so many homes share a similar plan, now on streets lined with mature trees. These names are traditional rather than official boundaries.
The Rahway River has flooded the town repeatedly over the past century, including during Hurricane Irene in 2011 and Hurricane Ida in 2021. Union County parks along the river, including Nomahegan, Lenape and Unami parks, sit within or beside residential areas, and Mohawk Park serves the Indian Village section. The Cranford public school district serves the township.
Cranford Station on South Avenue East is on NJ Transit's Raritan Valley Line. Eastbound, the line serves Newark Penn Station, where riders can connect to the Northeast Corridor and North Jersey Coast lines, PATH, Newark Light Rail and Amtrak for trips toward New York. The station is accessible. As of 2026 there are five parking areas near it, among them a garage at South Avenue West and South Union Avenue with hourly parking, a daily-fee lot at Chestnut Avenue and High Street, and permit lots, one of them limited to residents.
The Garden State Parkway runs along the south side of the township, forming one edge of the Indian Village section, and North Avenue is the main road through the downtown.
The downtown blocks around the station are the most walkable part of Cranford, and the small Lincoln Park section lies within walking distance of the station. The county park paths along the Rahway River, linking Nomahegan and Lenape parks with Echo Lake Park, give walkers a long off-street route.
The Rahway River is Cranford's main outdoor feature. Union County's park commission, which hired the Olmsted Brothers as landscape architects in 1922, developed parkland along it through the 1920s, including Unami Park, and in 1965 completed Lenape Park as a link between Nomahegan Park and Echo Lake Park. The township-owned Cranford Canoe Club has offered seasonal paddling on the river for more than a century, and part of the Hyatt Hills Golf Complex lies at the township's edge.
The Cranford Historical Society, founded in 1927, runs the Crane-Phillips House Museum, a restored 1870s Victorian cottage beside the river, open on the second and fourth Sunday afternoons from September through May. Its exhibits draw on the society's costume, tool and local history collections. The Cranford Public Library dates to 1877 and runs programs and lends museum passes.
The Cranford Theater, opened in 1926 as a 1,300-seat movie house and split into five screens in 1998, still shows films downtown and has hosted Garden State Film Festival screenings. Downtown Cranford, run by a township office, organizes seasonal events, including a Scarecrow Stroll along North Avenue that reached its 19th year in 2026 and an October Neewollah celebration at Eastman Plaza.
Researched and drafted from the public sources below. Updated October 2026. Spot something wrong or out of date? Tell us.
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Get matched| Nearest major airport | Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR)7 miles away |
|---|---|
| Nearest city of 250,000+ | Newark, NJ8 miles away |
| Nearest city of 1 million+ | New York, NY19 miles away |
Straight-line distances from the center of Cranford; driving is longer.
Source: Airports from OurAirports (scheduled passenger service); city centers and populations from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Source: Members of Congress from the congress-legislators project; districts from the Census Bureau’s relationship files; governor and mayor from Wikidata.
Cranford had 23,847 residents in the 2020 census, up 6% since 2000.
It’s the 113th largest of 565 towns in New Jersey by population.
Union County grew from 99,353 residents in 1900 to 575,345 in 2020.
Union County, 1900–2020
Source: U.S. Census Bureau decennial censuses (counties 1900–1990 from the Bureau’s historical county file).
Average highs peak around 86°F in summer, and winter lows average 25°F. About 50.4 inches of rain and melted snow fall in a typical year, with about 26 inches of snow.
Source: NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals, Cranford, NJ weather station (about a mile away).
208,505 jobs at 14,276 businesses in Union County. The biggest industries by employees:
Source: U.S. Census Bureau County Business Patterns 2023 (private employers; jobs counted where people work).
342 doctors and other health care providers list an office in Cranford.
Nearest hospitals
Providers with an office here
| Primary care doctors | 13 |
|---|---|
| Specialist doctors | 29 |
| Dentists | 25 |
| Nurse practitioners and physician assistants | 23 |
| Mental health providers | 135 |
| Physical and occupational therapists | 100 |
| Optometrists | 5 |
| Chiropractors | 12 |
| Pharmacies | 7 |
Source: Hospitals from CMS Hospital General Information (ratings are CMS overall star ratings); straight-line distances; providers from the CMS National Plan and Provider Enumeration System (NPPES), by practice address and primary specialty.
Parks (24 nearby)
Grocery stores (5 nearby)
Pharmacies (4 nearby)
Libraries (16 nearby)
Museums (1 nearby)
Theaters and performance venues (2 nearby)
Counts are within about 1.5 miles of the center of town.
Source: Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (openstreetmap.org/copyright), as mapped by volunteers; it can miss places or include closed ones.
Notable people born here
Source: Wikidata (wikidata.org), the free knowledge base; people are listed by place of birth.
Public schools here are run by Cranford Public School District. Check each district’s attendance zones for a specific address.
| School | Grades | Students | Type | Distance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Walnut Avenue SchoolCranford | Pre-K–2 | 304 | Public | 0.7 mi |
| Bloomingdale Avenue SchoolCranford | K–2 | 226 | Public | 1.0 mi |
| Brookside Place SchoolCranford | K–5 | 364 | Public | 0.8 mi |
| Hillside Avenue SchoolCranford | K–8 | 743 | Public | 0.8 mi |
| Livingston Avenue SchoolCranford | 3–5 | 270 | Public | 0.7 mi |
| Orange Avenue SchoolCranford | 3–8 | 750 | Public | 1.1 mi |
| Cranford High SchoolCranford | 9–12 | 1,116 | Public | 0.6 mi |
| School | Grades | Students | Affiliation | Distance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jardine AcademyCranford | Pre-K–12 | 71 | Nonsectarian | 0.9 mi |
| St Michael SchoolCranford | Pre-K–8 | 258 | Roman Catholic | 0.2 mi |
| Trinity Episcopal Day SchoolCranford | Pre-K–K | 17 | Episcopal | 0.4 mi |
| Cornerstone Day SchoolCranford | 6–12 | 125 | Nonsectarian | 1.2 mi |
Source: U.S. Department of Education, NCES: Common Core of Data (2024-2025) for public schools; Private School Universe Survey (2023-2024) for private schools. Listed by address; we don’t rate schools.
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Town boundaries don’t always match ZIP codes: a ZIP code can cross into neighboring towns, and a town can share a ZIP code with its neighbors. Facts describe the town itself; market figures describe whole ZIP codes.