A Sacramento bank building threatened with demolition to make way for a fast-food restaurant is getting another shot at being declared historically significant — largely because of its iconic Home Savings mosaics.
The building, vacant for several years, sits on a prime parcel in a retail area that includes Arden Fair mall. Its owners want to replace it with a Shake Shack drive-through and at least one other restaurant, and they hired a consultant who contended the mid-1970s building wouldn’t qualify for inclusion on a register of historical places.
That opinion raised a flurry of objections, prompting Sacramento’s preservation office to take a closer look at 1950 Arden Way — and ultimately to recommend that it be placed on the city’s register of historical and cultural resources. That recommendation is scheduled to go before the city council this month.
Inclusion on the historical registry would not preclude demolition of the building but would make the process more complicated, city spokeswoman Kelli Trapani told the Sacramento Bee.
Preservationists call the Arden Way building a prime example of the work of Millard Sheets, the artist and designer whos studio is known for mosaics and painted murals on hundreds of California buildings including those of Home Savings of America.
The recommendation from the city’s preservation staff says: “To people who lived in California during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the local Home Savings and Loan banks were distinctive and immediately recognizable. They … helped to create a sense of place in a rapidly changing world.”
One of the letters urging preservation of the Arden Way building came from Adam Arenson, a professor at New York’s Manhattan College who is the preeminent scholar of Sheets’ work — and who has assembled a database of more than 300 buildings with artwork by Sheets’ studio. The mosaics on the Arden Way building are by his frequent collaborator Susan Hertel.
Though Sheets’ work is most strongly associated with Southern California, prominent examples remain in the Bay Area — including the San Jose airport’s large mural, a 1977 gift from the Mercury News. Sheets also created the University of Notre Dame’s monumental mosaic popularly known as Touchdown Jesus.
Home Savings was bought in 1998 by Washington Mutual. That bank collapsed in 2008, and most of its assets were sold to JPMorgan Chase. Many of the former Home Savings buildings are now Chase banks.
