Jennifer Sale Crane is an architectural historian and independent researcher living in northern Virginia. She holds a master’s degree in historic preservation from Goucher College. She is currently an on-call architectural historian for Ardurra, working on CRM projects in the Southeast. From 2018 to 2021, she worked with Cultural Resources Analysts, Inc. as an on-call architectural historian for Section 106 work and an Administrative History of the Ford’s Theatre National Historic Site for OAH and NPS. Previously, she worked as a planner/architectural historian for Straughan Environmental Services, served on the board of the Arlington Historical Society and chaired the Building Committee responsible for stewardship of the 1891 Hume School by noted Washington architect B. Stanley Simmons.

She had the privilege of joining the team that re-assembled a 1949 Lustron Home inside New York’s Museum of Modern Art for the 2008 exhibit on prefab architecture, Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling. Her master’s thesis, Steeling Home: Defining Authenticity and Integrity for Prefabricated Lustron Homes, offered a definition of conceptual authenticity for Lustrons and other modern prefabs that could be used to guide preservation efforts and determine eligibility for the National Register. She presented at the 2010 Vernacular Architecture Forum conference on “Postwar Prefabs in the Washington, D.C., Suburbs: The Mass-Production Success of Vernacular Prefab Homes.”

Jennifer’s previous career managing digital content for the Public Broadcasting Service led to an interest in digital humanities and the use of data in historical research. Her current research interests include 18th- and 19th-century ice houses in the mid-Atlantic region, French-Swiss genealogy, and folk art watercolor portraits.