Small and Rare in Redondo Beach

By Adam Arenson

Sheets Studio, bird, mosaic detail, Redondo Beach, before 1961. Photo by Adam Arenson in 2012

The Home Savings branches were expertly sited — placed on prominent corners, so drivers could know, instantly, which financial institution it was.

The original branches had gold tiles and brightly colored mosaics, like these birds.

But, interestingly, this small Redondo Beach branch has since become a Wells Fargo, with the gold tiles replaced by the brown-and-red colors.

I don’t know a lot about this location -- it was completed before 1961, in the years before the Millard Sheets Papers were available. But it shows how even these small locations show the power of the Home Savings designs.

***Sheets Studio mosaic and building design, Redondo Beach, before 1961. Photo by Adam Arenson in 2012***

For my award-winning books — Banking on Beauty: Millard Sheets and Midcentury Commercial Architecture in California (Texas, 2018), The Great Heart of the Republic: St. Louis and the Cultural Civil War (Harvard, 2011/paperback Missouri, 2015) — and my co-edited volumes Civil War Wests: Testing the Limits of the United States (California, 2015) and Frontier Cities: Encounters at the Crossroads of Empire (Penn, 2013), as well as current projects, see: http://adamarenson.com and http://manhattan.edu/faculty/adamarenson

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