Crocker was president of
Crocker National Bank. When much of the city of
San Francisco was destroyed by the fire from the
1906 earthquake, Crocker and his bank were major forces in financing reconstruction. Crocker also was a director of the
Sperry Flour Co., the company of his wife's family owning a chain of flour mills across the US, a truly global conglomerate, with branches as far away as Hong-Kong and Norway.,,,
Philanthropy -
Italian Villa style mansion (1877), formerly at the N.W. corner of California & Taylor, San Francisco, now the site of
Grace Cathedral Following the 1906 earthquake and fire, which destroyed both William Henry Crocker’s mansion and his father Charles Crocker’s adjacent Nob Hill residence, Crocker donated the family’s
Nob Hill block to the Episcopal Diocese in 1907 for
Grace Cathedral., He was a member of the
University of California Board of Regents for nearly thirty years and funded the
Lawrence Radiation Laboratory's million-volt x-ray tube at the UC hospital and the "medical" Crocker cyclotron used for neutron therapy at Berkeley. In 1936, Crocker contributed $75,000 toward the building of a laboratory for
Ernest O. Lawrence at the
University of California, Berkeley, which was subsequently named "Crocker Radiation Laboratory" in his honor. This laboratory became home to the Berkeley 60" cyclotron. In the 1960s, parts of this cyclotron were moved to the
University of California, Davis, where they were the basis for the Crocker Nuclear Laboratory, which inherited its name from the original. Crocker also chaired the
Panama–Pacific Exposition Committee and SE Community Chest, and was a key member of the committee that built the
San Francisco Opera House and Veterans Building. Crocker was the founder of
Crocker Middle School located in
Hillsborough, California. The
Sacramento, California, home of Crocker's uncle,
Edwin B. Crocker, was converted into the
Crocker Art Museum, which was the first art museum to open in the West.
Art collection works they had acquired in 1894 was a painting by
Claude Monet from his famous
Haystacks series, "''Meule, soir d'hiver"
, from 1899-1890 (''
W1217a) which was lost to eternity during the Great Fire following the
1906 earthquake in San Francisco, as was most of the rest of their collection. Surviving items of Ethel's Egyptian and Byzantine textile collection were on loan to the
San Francisco Museum of Art until 1953, when the collection was shipped to
Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C.,
Philately File:1869 24c United States stamps with inverted centre.jpg|thumb|The block of four of the 1869 24c United States stamps with inverted centre owned by Crocker (shown inverted) The stamp collection survived because it was on tour abroad at the time. ==Personal life==