The older section is a one-and-a-half-story L-shaped structure of sandstone in a random ashlar pattern, mostly grey with local red Albion stone as trim.

Both sections have a steeply pitched gabled roof, with the projecting main entrance pavilion, off-center to the north, creating a cross-gable.

[2] Steps lead up to the wide round segmental arch on low imposts, a particularly Richardsonian detail, which shelters the recessed main entrance.

His mother chose a piece of property near the family mansion as the site of a library to be built in his memory and donated to the city.

She commissioned a design from James Goold Cutler, a builder and businessman who had invented the mail chute and later mayor of Rochester.

[2] Cutler consciously emulated several Romanesque libraries that had been built in recent years by Henry Hobson Richardson in the suburbs of Boston.

The only notable difference is in the front facade's remaining fenestration—the Crane Library has what Henry-Russell Hitchcock described as a "curiously modern" strip of windows, while Cutler's are more conventional for the time.

[3] The library's mission statement is "to continually assure access to resources and services that meet the educational, informational and recreational needs of its community in a safe and comfortable environment".