During World War II, Crosley's facilities produced more proximity fuzes than any other U.S. manufacturer, and made several production design innovations.

Crosley's Pinecroft estate home in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Seagate, his former winter retreat in Sarasota, Florida are listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

While living with his family in College Hill, a suburb of Cincinnati, twelve-year-old Crosley made his first attempt at building a vehicle.

After his marriage, Crosley continued to work in automobile sales in Muncie to earn money to buy a house, while his wife returned to Cincinnati to live with her parents.

Crosley's primary residence was Pinecroft, an estate home built in 1929 in the Mount Airy section of Cincinnati, Ohio.

Pinecroft, Crosley's two-story, 13,334-square-foot (1,238.8 m2), Tudor Revival-style mansion and other buildings on his estate in Mount Airy was designed by New York-based architect Dwight James Baum and built in 1928–29.

[4] Seagate, also known as the Bay Club, along Sarasota Bay in the southwest corner of Manatee County, Florida, was a Mediterranean Revival-style home designed for Crosley by New York City and Sarasota architect George Albree Freeman Jr., with Ivo A. de Minicis, a Tampa, Florida, architect, drafting the plans.

The house contains and is reportedly the first residence built in Florida using steel-frame construction to provide protection against fires and hurricanes.

[4][8][9] Crosley, an avid sportsman, also owned several sports, hunting, and fishing camps, including an island retreat called Nikassi on McGregor Bay, Lake Huron, Canada; Bull Island, South Carolina; Pimlico Plantation, along the Cooper River north of Charleston, South Carolina; Sleepy Hollow Farm, a retreat in Jennings County, Indiana and a house at Cat Cays, Bahamas.

[3][4] Crosley began work selling bonds for an investment banker; however, at the age of twenty-one he decided to pursue a career in automobile manufacturing.

[1] The mass-production techniques employed by Henry Ford also caught his attention and would be implemented by his brother, Lewis, when the two began manufacturing radios in 1921.

[citation needed] In 1907 Crosley formed a company to build the Marathon Six, a six-cylinder model priced at $1,700, which was at the low end of the luxury car market.

His next job was selling advertising for Motor Vehicle, an automotive trade journal, but left in 1910 to move to Muncie, Indiana, where he worked in sales for the Inter-State Automobile Company and promoted its racing team.

[2] After returning to Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1911, Crosley sold and wrote advertisements for local businesses, but continued to pursue his interests in the automobile industry.

Crosley immediately recognized the appeal of an inexpensive radio and hired two University of Cincinnati students to help design a low-cost set that could be mass-produced.

[21] Among the entertainers who performed live from WLW's studios were Red Skelton, Doris Day, Jane Froman, Fats Waller, Rosemary Clooney, and the Mills Brothers.

[citation needed] WLW's engineers also built high-power shortwave transmitters on a site about 25 miles (40 km) north of Cincinnati.

[22] Crosley also introduced the "Autogym," a motor-driven weight-loss device with a vibrating belt, and the "Go-Bi-Bi," a "rideable baby walker," among other products.

[23] In February 1934, Crosley purchased the Cincinnati Reds professional baseball team from Sidney Weil, who had lost much of his wealth after the Wall Street Crash of 1929.

With attendance at its evening games more than four times greater that its daytime events, the team's financial position was greatly improved.

[13] Crosley also approved baseball's first regularly-scheduled play-by-play broadcasts of all scheduled games on his local station, WSAI, whose call letters stood for "sports and information," and later on WLW.

Crosley was also the owner of luxury yachts with powerful engines, and an active fisherman who participated in celebrated tournaments in Sarasota, Florida.

[24][23] Crosley owned several sports, hunting, and fishing camps: Nikassi, an island retreat in Ontario, Canada; Bull Island off the coast of South Carolina; a hunting retreat he called Sleepy Hollow Farm in Jennings County, Indiana, and a Caribbean vacation home at Cat Cays, Bahamas.

In an attempt to render the aircraft stall proof and safe for amateur pilots to fly, Mignet staggered the two main wings.

[citation needed] Of all Crosley's dreams, success at building an affordable automobile for Americans was possibly the only major one eventually to elude him.

In the years leading up to World War II, Crosley developed new products that included reviving one of his earliest endeavors at automobile design and manufacturing.

[27] The new Crosley "CC" model automobile continued the company's pre-war tradition of offering small, lightweight, and low-priced cars.

[1] Unfortunately for Crosley, fuel economy ceased to be an inducement after gas rationing ended, and American consumers also began to prefer bigger cars.

The company made a variety of products, including proximity fuzes, experimental military vehicles, radio transceivers, and gun turrets, among other items.

Without government security clearance, Crosley was prohibited from entering the area of his plant that manufactured the fuzes and did not know what top-secret products it produced until the war's end.