Free Talk: Millard Sheets & Mid-Century Commercial Architecture in California

Join Society of Architectural Historians/Southern California Chapter as author Adam Arenson debuts Banking on Beauty: Millard Sheets and Mid-Century Commercial Architecture in California (University of Texas Press, 2018), his long-awaited volume on the architecture of Home Savings.

For more than three decades, Sheets (1907-1989) and his studio of artists designed Home Savings and Loan branches throughout California, studding their iconic projects with mosaics, murals, stained glass, and sculptures that celebrated both family life and the history of the Golden State.

The collaboration between the Millard Sheets Studio and Howard Ahmanson (1906-1968), Home Savings’ executive, resulted in more than 40 branches designed and built between the completion of the first collaboration in 1955 and Ahmanson’s death. Combining private investment and public art, and championing historical themes in a period of dramatic cultural and political change, the Home Savings and Loan buildings are signature structures of mid-century modern architecture, and their story deserves to be known before it is too late to save these remarkable works.

Adam Arenson, Associate Professor of History and Director of Urban Studies at Manhattan College in the Bronx, NY, has created a richly illustrated book that is a landmark in business history and the distinctive style of architecture and art that graced 60 communities around Southern California.

Visitors to the Downtown Central Library receive 3 hours free parking in the MarketPlace parking structure on Harvard Street with validation at the library service desk on the main floor. This talk is cosponsored by SAH/SCC and the Glendale Library, Arts & Culture Department. Copies of Banking on Beauty: Millard Sheets and Midcentury Commercial Architecture in California will be available for purchase and signing.