612 St Clair Ave

612 St Clair Ave

Sheboygan

Sheboygan

1887

2002,2020

house

Queen Anne

Aluminum/Vinyl Siding

No

Large two and one-half story house has a three story round corner tower and shingles on the porch posts. 2020-2024 Targeted Resurvey of Sheboygan recommendation write-up: The subject house was identified as potentially eligible in the 2006 final survey report; however, it was not discussed anywhere in the text, nor was it identified with a historic name or a solid date of construction. Following additional research, this Queen Anne-style house was built circa 1887 for Rogers E. and Ruth Crocker. Rogers Crocker was born in New York in 1846. Rogers would join his father and brothers at the Crocker & Bliss Chair Factory, working there until the factory burned in 1875. He then served as the superintendent of the chair making department of the Phoenix Chair Company. In 1880, Rogers, along with two brothers and three other individuals established the Crocker Chair Company, the firm of which was one of Sheboygan’s largest employers and it was also, at one point, purported to be the largest chair manufacturer in the world. By circa 1912, the Crockers had sold the house to E.M. Parmalee and moved to Pasadena, California, and reportedly only summered in Sheboygan. Ruth died in 1921. Rogers would return to Sheboygan, living with his son William; Rogers died on Christmas Day, 1925. Beginning in 1956 and continuing into the early 1970s, the house served as Bethany Manor Home, a home for the aged. As of 1975, the house opened as “Willowglen East,” a residential treatment center for emotionally disturbed children, an extension of Willowglen Academy in Plymouth. The 612 St. Clair location lasted just one year.

LJM Architects, Inc. City of Sheboygan, Wisconsin: Architectural and Historical Intensive Survey Report. City of Sheboygan Historic Preservation Commission & Department of City Development; 2002, 2004 & 2006. Citations for the recommendation write-up for the 2020-2024 Targeted Resurvey of Sheboygan: U.S. Federal Census, Population, 1910; Sheboygan City Directory, 1910-1911, 1912-1913; “Mrs. R. Crocker Died Tuesday in Pasadena, Calif.,” The Sheboygan Press, 19 October 1921, 1; “Pioneer in Furniture Trade Dies,” The Sheboygan Press, 26 December 1925, 1; “$11,500 Fire at Home for the Aged Here,” The Sheboygan Press, 9 November 1956, 1; Dawn Belleau, “Willowglen East—Almost A Home,” The Sheboygan Press, 17 April 1975, 11; “Dawn Jax Belleau, “Community Treatment…Just What the Doctor Ordered,” The Sheboygan Press, 10 March 1977, 14.