Cromley is the first woman to hold a permanent chair in the school since it was founded in 1969, and, according to the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, is also one of the few non-architects in the United States to hold such a position.

Cromley, a member of the UB faculty since 1980, in 1981 received the Student Association Award for Excellence in Teaching. She has served as director of the undergraduate program in the School of Architecture and Planning since 1990 and previously served as associate chair and acting chair of the school's Department of Architecture.

Cromley's research and writing on the architectural history and meaning of domestic spaces has earned her distinction in her field. She is the author of "Alone Together" (Cornell University Press), a 1991 history of the New York City apartment building, which received the best-book prize awarded by New York's Victorian Society, and co-author of "Resorts of the Catskills," published in 1979 by St. Martins Press and the Gallery Association of New York.

She was the editor of two volumes in the University of Missouri Press series, "Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture," and has two works in progress, "Sleeping Around: A History of American Bedrooms," and "Internal Affairs: A History of American Domestic Space."

Cromley has presented her research in a number of refereed journals and has worked as a director, project master, consultant or contributor for several architectural exhibitions by the Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society, as well as for the Smithsonian Institution and the Whitney Museum.

She was a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellow in 1990-91, a Benno Forman Fellow at the Winterthur Museum in 1988 and a NEH Fellow at Winterthur's Center for Advanced Study in 1984. She is a founder and past president of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, and a member of the Society of Architectural Historians.

A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania in art history, she received a master's degree from the New York University Institute of Fine Arts and a doctorate in art history from the City University of New York.

Cromley held a visiting professorship in the College of Environmental Design, University of California at Berkeley, in 1987 and, before coming to UB, taught at CUNY's City College and Bronx Community College.