Les Crocker taught art history at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse for 32 years. After receiving his PhD from the University of Missouri-Columbia, he researched the architecture of Tennessee and Mississippi for the Historic American Building Survey. Crocker is past president of the La Crosse County Historical Society, the La Crosse Area for Historic Preservation, and was chair of the art department. Currently he is preparing a volume of the public architecture and public spaces of La Crosse . With the help of his wife, he is restoring his 1877 farmhouse.
The architecture of most Wisconsin communities reflects the state and national styles popular in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Using slides provided by the Marshfield Public Library and local historic preservation organizations Crocker will discuss how our local buildings relate to these styles. With slides of 15- 20 local buildings, Dr. Crocker will provide appropriate terminology for these buildings, such as style names, names of significant features. He will also go into the aesthetics of buildings, what to look for, or look at. We will discover how the nineteenth century looked at them and recapture some parts of what they saw and how they saw it.