A Tribute to Dr. Les Crocker

(written by Anita Taylor Doering, retired LPL Archives Manager 1989-2025)

In memory of Dr. Leslie F. Crocker, March 15, 1942 - February 16, 2025

Death is Hard Teacher.

Through our lives, we build bonds and relationships with people. It’s difficult when those relationships with people are important not only to us personally, but to our community.

You can ask your local librarians questions, and they provide the best answer they can based on the information available to them. In the Archives profession, we often build relationships with our patrons who are entrenched in a “deep dive” for historical information, especially if that research involves a specialty from an institution’s collections. In the case of the LPL Archives, this would be local history. As a result, we become part of their research team and support system.

Our community lost Dr. Leslie F. Crocker recently, a valuable and well respected architectural historian. He did not put himself first—it was about giving back to the community our own history that has been lost, some has just been hidden and yet some remains nearly intact.

To most folks in La Crosse or to the thousands of students who attended one of his classes in the UW-La Crosse Art Department, they referred to him as Dr. Crocker. But to me he was just Les. I was never his student—I was always his colleague in research. But I had to prove my value as a researcher to him first.

Once Les decided he was going to stay at UWL and likely finish his career there, he began to take photos of structures and the built environment in La Crosse in the mid-1970s. Eventually, he began to try and classify and identify these structures by architectural type but La Crosse’s architecture rejected being boxed in. Les’ research and ideas began to distill over time and he thought more and more about how these structures did not fit neatly into boxes. Again, La Crosse didn’t have many purebred true architectural styles. He began to slowly label them as “vernacular” and sometimes further broke that down by the predominant material used on the exterior of a building.

During his working years at UWL, Les’ associations with two of his students produced written works. Non-traditional student Joan M. Rausch, a former nurse turned student, was determined to have a second career following her passion. She became an architectural historian like her mentor, Dr. Crocker. Les was extremely proud of her tenacity and the duo explored and prepared an exhibit and catalog of local Norwegian immigrant Odin Oyen works at UWL in 1979. Oyen and his firm were well known across the Midwest for their murals and other interior decoration particularly in large public buildings and spaces. Joan also left her mark on La Crosse’s architectural history and her seminal 1996 survey is often used and cited when the LPL Archives explores a house or property history. Another student, Stephannie Hammes, created a booklet with Les on outdoor sculpture as he assigned this project to one of his classes annually. Many of these public art pieces have now been lost. This work, along with many Oyen sketches, are available through the UWL Murphy Library Digital Collections.

Laura Godden (UWL), Jenny DeRocher (LPL), and Les Crocker in June 2024, the day of Les' oral history interview

Upon his arrival in La Crosse in 1969, Les became fast friends with Ed Hill, Special Collections Librarian at UWL’s Murphy Library (retired in 1998). The two were hugely influential in and became vocal advocates and activists for historic preservation in La Crosse in the mid-1970s. They were the pioneers of La Crosse’s historic preservation movement after the Courthouse and Post Office fell under the wrecking ball, and formed the group that eventually became a grassroots organization called the Preservation Alliance of La Crosse. As Les would say, “You should join them.” Fortunately, Jenny DeRocher of LPL and Laura Godden of UWL interviewed both of these men for the UWL Oral History Program in the summer of 2024.

Anita Taylor Doering, Ed Hill, and Les Crocker in 2018 at the UWL Murphy Library Award

In 1993-94, the LPLA participated in a competitive regrant program for local government. Part of this grant was to identify, inventory and transfer materials from other city departments to LPLA. One record series stood out to me which was the water tap records from the Water Utility. These records documented when water hook up to each property address occurred. Extremely valuable for property research, I paved the way for other records to be obtained to help further property history research and thus our community’s historic resources—and this naturally aided Les’ local history research.

Like many retired faculty, Les began his research in La Crosse architecture in earnest after he retired in 2001. Les had done most of his research at UWL Murphy Library’s Special Collections & Area Research Center looking through historical photographs of La Crosse to try and understand architectural trends over time.

Les in the LPL Archives Reading Room, looking at tax records

In 2005, only four years after Les retired, LPLA acquired the city tax rolls from UWL Murphy Library Special Collections & Area Research Center. In that same year, LPLA acquired the photographs, paper archives, maps and other tax records from the La Crosse County Historical Society. Like water tap records, tax records are extremely important for anyone doing any kind of property research, and for Les, these were hugely important primary sources for his work and research. Les did all of his own research—he never left any of the drudgery of research to students. So, Les began to do more and more research at the LPLA because of those factors.

In his oral history interview, Les remembers the turning point with his affiliation with the La Crosse Public Library as the “Thanks for the Memories” program to celebrate the LPLA 25th anniversary in 2007. We solicited entries from the public about their memories of the Public Library Archives and of La Crosse. Les chose to talk about the green “tunnel of Dutch Elm trees” that lined the streets of the impressive large lumber baron mansions of State, King, Main and Cass streets. I particularly liked Les’ impression of a time in La Crosse that could never be again. His entry spoke to me of the “unwritten” emotions that people have with a place that is normally “lost” to history and the unspoken or undocumented relationships that people have with places. Unless we consciously think about the Dutch Elm disease and its impact on the city streetscape and daily experience, it would be lost to history. History is so much of a weaving of different influences affecting the daily life that are not recorded. It is a tapestry. And Les understood why I liked his memories—it wasn’t a feeling and experience that affected hundreds of people, yet Les put into words what the silent majority felt on a daily basis. During the weekdays, Les drove in from his farm in rural Houston and would have noticed these subtle changes every day.

One of his first “challenges” to me was to find out more about the architects of the Grandad Bluff shelter for what would become his Places and Spaces book. He casually mentioned to me one day when he was in the reading room about never knowing who designed it. He knew it was likely a WPA program initiative but didn’t know for certain. With some effort, I found the La Crosse Common Council resolution pursing the funding from the WPA and it did include some valuable information for Les and his research. Did he thank me? No. Did he jump up and down? No. I must say I was a bit taken aback. He looked quizzically at me, cocked his head, closed one eye, and stared at me, as though he was thinking, What is this creature before me? I was disappointed frankly. But I had apparently proved my worth to him without fireworks or accolades or anything. I was deemed worthy of being included in his research circle.

A major connector between Les and I was the study of the “everyday person.” Not the mansions in this case, but the average middle to working-class house of the average person. I always trended toward the “everyday person” and really thought nothing of it until a colleague recently challenged me on it. “When you hired me, you directed me to focus my research and work on marginalized communities, to get more inclusion in the archives,” they said. I had to pause and figure out where that came from. It just seemed natural. And it obviously seemed natural to Les as well. We were both “everyday” folk and why didn’t our experiences matter in the historical record? Of course they mattered, and we didn’t think twice about it, even though, like oral and local history, it wasn’t “accepted” in the scholarly historical community until the 1980s-1990s. It was a process and continues to be.

Another connector which most people would not put together is our Southern roots. Ok, I am not a grits person, but my mother is. She was raised, like Les, on the goodness of grits. When communicating with Les, I often would use a colloquialism from my mother such as “a month of Sundays.” Les would eat that up, “I haven’t heard that expression in over 30 years!” he would exclaim with delight. My mom was raised in Missouri and spent summers in Little Rock, Arkansas—enough so that her southern influence wore off on me in some expressions. The distance between Little Rock and Memphis is about 140 miles. To Les, that meant we were neighbors a generation apart.

Les published Places and Spaces (2012) based on La Crosse’s public buildings and spaces, such as Germania Hall and the Pettibone Bath House. In 2015, Les published his We’ve Hung the Lantern, a book about UWL’s built environment history. 

Les always knew the best angle to look at a building to uncover its history, and wasn't shy to take tour groups into alleys. This tour was during the 2014 La Crosse Buildings Through Time lectures at the La Crosse Public Library.

At LPLA we began to work collaboratively on a series of summer adult life-long learning talks about historical La Crosse architecture, which Les adored. It was his opportunity to lecture and teach adults again. But he learned along with the class. People would come forth after class and talk about their specific connection to the architecture of La Crosse and it mattered. We also took walks through the neighborhood and Les would discuss architectural elements that were worthy of mention.

This book is available for check out at the La Crosse Public Library

Eventually I had the idea to incorporate all the handouts into a book which became a fund raiser for the LPLA called La Crosse Buildings Through Time with photographs, which was published in 2015. Dave Kranz did all the layout as an employee of LPLA at that time. It highlighted all the main points of Les’ examples of historical architecture of La Crosse. The lecture series was very popular and lasted several years until Les began having health issues with stamina. He was disappointed that I pulled the plug, thinking it was taxing his heath too much. I doubt he ever forgave me for that.

Jenny DeRocher and Les Crocker, recording Les' lecture on cupolas in La Crosse

However, Les continued to contribute blogs for the LPLA website on architecture and other sundry topics and Sarah Ludington of LPLA helped immensely with editing those. A few video lectures were created with Jenny DeRocher and are available on YouTube.

Les’ final book, Immigrants All: Domestic Architecture of La Crosse, 1842-1879, was written a couple of years ago and was meant as a fund raiser for LPLA. But the lack of a designer was problematic. This final work will be released in 2025 through the La Crosse Public Library Archives. If you are interested in a copy, let the Archives know at archives@lacrosselibrary.org.

What happened to all the photographs that Les took of La Crosse buildings and structures over these many years? He had his slides digitized and then began taking photos on a digital camera. He donated these to the LPLA formally in 2024, and volunteer Barbara Fischer (also a former student of Les’) has been diligently sorting them.

A 1977 slide of the Pink Palace by Les Crocker. This is just one of thousands of slides donated to LPLA

Les was a great person and an awesome teacher who touched people in unconventional ways. He once taught my then-teenaged son how to chop wood with an axe and how to find snakes in the wild. He had developed many life skills out on his former farm near Houston, Minnesota. He knew how to build structures and the energy and materials necessary to create those structures. Somehow, Les was able to bring the conversation full circle and make it meaningful beyond architecture or art history. Les had a grasp on how everything interconnected in life. Architecture is a reflection of human art and function in particular points in time. And Les always reminded me and others on our tours to, “Look up! The tops of buildings rarely get changed; it’s the bottom where the retail shops try to lure you in where the superficial changes have been made. The upper stories will reveal a building’s true story and age. The era of the automobile only enhanced that narrow street view, so look up, people.”

Everyone looking up on one of Les' tours at the Mons Anderson House during the 2014 La Crosse Buildings Through Time lectures at the La Crosse Public Library

Want to explore more of Les Crocker's research?

Go to the Architecture Learners' Toolkit on the Footsteps of La Crosse website.