What does a centrifuge do?

That’s the question I ask, in the first week of every course I teach, as I introduce this writing model. Sometimes the science majors perk up—the first question, in this required class seemingly far outside their major, speaks directly to their interests.

A centrifuge spins round and round, they often answer. A detail. OK, but why? I ask. A pause, and then a better answer: to separate things. Even better: To refine them.

Then the conversation gets radioactive.

What process uses a chain of centrifuges? Uranium enrichment, from less than one percent U-235 to a few percentage points, up to a nuclear-grade concentration of twenty percent—that is the work of centrifuges, spinning and separating, the product of one round of refinement pushed even farther in the next.

I draw four ovals on the board, in an ascending series, the line looping from one to the next. Week in and week out we will practice, I explain; the iterative process is its own form of refinement.

My centrifuge model of reading response papers builds upon this analogy: that students can purify, and refine, and deepen their analysis over the course of four paragraphs, with a model that can work as a rhetorical frame in any course.

The four paragraphs I require are:

Detail. Pick one telling detail from the night’s reading. If you can quote it and properly cite it, even better. But just one—not a list of key points, not a summary. (This paragraph tends to be easy points. Unless they summarize.)

Significance. Explain how the telling detail reveals something that will be important to our class discussion, ideally on the day it is due, but perhaps some time in this unit or this semester. Why does this detail matter? (As even a keyword identification can reveal, getting the significance right is hard, but I do offer half credit at times.)

Implications. This is where I ask students to stretch. How might this little detail be a “little door”* into a controversial theory, or a moment of insight? How far can you take the significance of that detail? What multitudes may be hiding inside? The more passionate the claim the better. (If the students love a good rant, this gets easier—though many are unaccustomed to placing their own arguments and opinions so prominently in a paper, even one asking for their personal response.)

Remaining Tensions. An argument, filled with implications, is an accomplishment, I explain. But to be able to identify the gaps in that arguments, the items that a rant might overlook, the countervailing pressures and tensions left unresolved, the acknowledgment of humility—that is a depth of analysis, a sophistication in thinking, that only the best writing assignments achieve. And so I am asking that they practice it, in each written response, to build up the depth and sophistication of their arguments. (These points are hard to garner, so they function almost like extra credit.)

The paragraphs can be short, or they can be pages long; some students can punch out a quality centrifuge assignment in an hour, while others complain that it takes them hours to complete. I explain from the outset that they can argue whatever they wish, about whatever detail seemed important to them; not a few find that freedom daunting. As they look at models I provide and respond to my feedback on each of the four paragraphs, they might begin frustrated, but focused: the conversation turns immediately to depth of analysis and mastery of the rhetoric, not merely recall of facts. As they master the form, they begin to talk about centrifuges as writing, the metaphor becoming their new reality.

I love grading my centrifuge assignments. I assign them after the reading and before class, so they let me know what students understand before the discussion. I always learn something, about their reading practices, their insights, and their attitudes toward the subject matter at hand. And, week after week, this iterative assignment teaches students to read closely, think deeply, stretch to the widest implications, and be able to admit what their arguments leave unresolved.

The centrifuge analogy has helped me explain to students—majors and nonmajors alike—how to find a small entry point into the week’s readings, and how to push their arguments and analysis deeper. Having the assignment iterate throughout the semester gives students a chance to learn my standards, understand the assignment, and excel as they apply its approach to new course material. I have found that it truly refines students’ thinking in written assignments—something definitely worth spinning about.

(As I write up more of my strategies for teaching student writing, you can find them here.)

——

• In his 2009 book War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S.-Mexican War, Brian DeLay calls Article XI of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo “a little door into a big story, one told only in pieces by borderlands anthropologists and historians and forgotten altogether by the broader national and international histories of the era.” (p. xv) That image—a small, almost-forgotten detail becoming transformative and opening into a wide, unexplored set of implications and tensions—has stuck with me, and it likely had a role in my developing the centrifuge assignment.

CBRE, which manages the commercial lease on many of the former Home Savings properties (those sold, once upon a time, to Met Life and rented back by Home Savings, Washington Mutual, and now JP Morgan Chase) has listed 11 of these properties for sale:

My sense is that JP Morgan Chase is staying as a tenant, but it would be a useful time for those in San Francisco, Garden Grove, Sacramento, San Bernardino, and Santa Cruz, in particular, to emphasize the importance of this art and architecture in their community, and to push for its preservation.

In separate news, a second Sacramento branch, in the Arden area, has been slated for demolition; I hope that Arden Way Arcade, Sacramento Modern, and supporters from around the state can advocate for its preservation.

Millard Sheets Studio, Arden Way, Sacramento, 1978; detail of mosaic.

For these and more properties, be sure to check the Definitive List for information about artists and dates.

Please keep me posted about any further developments, and ways that I can help.

Millard Sheets Studio, Santa Cruz branch, completed 1978. Photo from 2017 by Hunter Kerhart.

Two young fans of the book show it “out in the wild” of southern California. Photograph by Kim Silverstein.

Speaking at Palm Springs Modernism Week, 2018.

Speaking at the University of California Berkeley.

Hi everyone!

I know it has been a long time since I posted on this blog — but I have been able to meet many Millard Sheets enthusiasts at book talks and other public lectures across California over the past eight months! It has been so wonderful to talk about this project with Sheets Studio artists, Sheets family members, in Sheets Studio buildings, and even on public radio!

I am honored that the book has been recognized as “bring[ing] attention to main street architecture with real design value and the impact of individual grassroots efforts” through the 2018 DOCOMOMO US Modernism in America Awards. And I am grateful that the Archives of American Art highlighted the book in its July e-newsletter.

With the book published, more local Millard Sheets enthusiasts and preservation advocates have found me, and so I have some updates:

• The 1980 Long Beach mosaic that was painted over has now re-emerged, with a formal rededication scheduled for October 2018. Learn more here and look for the unveiling photos soon!

• Despite having voted for the building as a local landmark in 2017, the Santa Monica City Council signed an agreement with the building owner in September 2018 to allow it to be demolished, with “four pieces of artwork” to be preserved within the city. Given the large mosaic, the stained-glass windows, and at least two large sculptures, it is unclear whether all will be preserved; read what we know now, here.

• The trees in front of the Home Savings at Lombard and Van Ness in San Francisco have been cut down, and so the mosaics can finally be seen again for the first time in decades! Here’s my photograph from the first day they were visible, in March 2018:

My photograph of the Lombard branch, San Francisco, March 2018, when the trees were cut down and the mosaics revealed again for the first time in decades.

• I was also able to see three artworks for the first time: a Nancy Colbath-designed mosaic in Borrego Springs, and a sculpture by Gwynn Merrill outside the former Home Savings at 200 California, and a Parable of the Talents completed by Millard Sheets and Sue Hertel for a Dallas savings-and-loan in the 1950s, now on display at Biola University:

My photograph of Gwynn Merrill sculpture for Home Savings, San Francisco.

My photograph of a section of the mosaic by Nancy Colbath in Borrego Springs.

My photograph of Millard Sheets and Sue Hertel, Parable of the Talents for Dallas savings-and-loan, now at Biola University.

• In the book, I follow Denis O’Connor’s notes suggesting that the bird mosaics for Vallejo were demolished. Reader Ted Ellison happily has proved me wrong, and he has sent along these recent pictures of the building. Do note, though, how some floodlights have been placed over sections of the mosaic:

Ted Ellison, 2018 photograph of former Home Savings in Vallejo, artwork by Denis O’Connor and Studio. Note the floodlight cut into the rear mosaic (not the same one as above).

• In the book, I suggest that the El Sereno branch never had any Millard Sheets Studio artwork; in February, I met a woman who used to bank there who said there was likely a mural behind the tellers. I haven’t been able to learn more, but if you have any more information about this branch, please let me know!

I am so glad that this research is published, and that it has found an audience among those interested in Mid-Century Modern art and architecture, suburban main streets, community history, and more! I hope to continue to organize events to discuss this research, and to help communities with preservation efforts — I look forward to hearing from you!

Bank of America, former Home Savings branch in Berwyn, Illinois. Image from Google StreetView; see below for details.

Hello again!

As we reach the end of 2014, I wanted to give you an update about all that is happening behind the scenes–as well as to share some thoughts about those Home Savings branches constructed outside California, and the effort to add them to the story.

It has been a productive fall! With support from Howard Ahmanson Jr. and the Ahmanson Foundation, I have been on leave, writing my book on the art, architecture, and urban context of the Sheets Studio work for Home Savings. Four of the planned seven chapters are drafted: The Story, Origins, Location, and Reception. That leaves Process, Meaning, and Legacies as the chapters to draft this spring. I am also speaking with presses about a full-color, heavily illustrated book, as well as museums about a possible exhibition. And, on Monday, I was interviewed by Paul Bockhurst for his documentary projects about Millard Sheets and other Claremont artists, and I toured Claremont Heritage.

Both the Location and Legacies chapter have sent me back into the records to track down dates and addresses–and so this week I published a full revision of the Definitive List, with more locations, and more accurate construction dates. There are two maps: one mapping all of the 168 former Home Savings locations, and the other with all the 159 other Sheets Studio public art sites. I welcome more information about their current status as well.

The question of current ownership–and whether those owners realize what they have–has finally driven my new post off the to-do list and now to your screens.

Vacant former Home Savings location at Bannister Mall, Kansas City. Image from Google StreetView; see below for details.

From 1947, when Howard Ahmanson purchased it, Home Savings had regular periods of growth, through acquiring other savings-and-loans, petitioning the state to expand their territory, and final due to changed regulations that allowed expansion throughout California, in around 1976, and then across the nation, in the mid-1980s. Though Millard Sheets had completed retired from the studio in 1980, Sue Hertel and Denis O’Connor, who had worked with Sheets on these commissions for decades, continued to produce similar work. Around 1990, Home Savings also commissioned some other artists, such as Marlo Bartels, Astrid Preston, and Richard Haas, to produce branch artwork, with a similar focus on community identity and history. These locations were constructed in Florida, Illinois, Missouri, New York, Ohio, and Texas.

In 1998, Home Savings was sold to Washington Mutual, and then in 2007-8, Washington Mutual was seized by the government and rapidly given to JP Morgan Chase. At both moments, some of the locations that the Sheets Studio had designed and decorated for Home Savings ceased to be banks. In 1998, some of those properties were sold to Met Life and managed by CB Richard Ellis, such as former branches in Santa Monica, Coronado, Montebello, and the Home Savings headquarters in Irwindale, along with some locations that are still banks, such as Santa Barbara and Riverside, presumably based on the value of their locations. Since Washington Mutual acquired a number of financial institutions before its collapse, other branches in an area where multiple banks were acquired, such as La Mesa and Redondo Beach, were sold off to other commercial-real-estate holders at other times. (I don’t have a master list of Washington Mutual locations from 2007; if you do, perhaps in a booklet form, I would love to see it!)

Chase was interested in taking Washington Mutual from the federal government in part because of its network of locations on the West Coast, where Chase had not had a presence; according to my list, Chase currently owns at least 69 locations with Sheets Studio artwork, mostly former Home Savings locations.

Wells Fargo, a former Home Savings branch in St. Petersburg, FL. Image from Google StreetView; see below for details.

But what gets really interesting is what happened to the 52 Home Savings locations with Sheets Studio artwork outside of California. Home Savings had for decades used their art and architecture as part of how to stand out against their traditional competitors in the West, including Wells Fargo and Bank of America, both based in San Francisco at the time. While both had some tradition of historic artifacts or mosaic banks, these seemed pale imitations to the number and uniformity of the Home Savings locations.

Yet, outside of California, I have found that, over and over again, it is Wells Fargo and Bank of America that are using the former Home Savings buildings–either purchased outright, or by acquiring banks that had acquired the location, such as Wachovia in Florida. Whether these locations were sold off by Washington Mutual in 1998 or Chase in 2008, I am not sure, but it seems that the California banks understood the power of this art and architecture, and they wanted to be first in line to pick up the former competitors’ locations in other states. I have found 12 locations owned by Bank of America, mostly in Illinois; 12 by Wells Fargo, mostly in Florida; and a few by US Bank in California, and then local credit unions and banks and trust companies elsewhere.

Thus, in a way, even when these banks are isolated–only five in all of Ohio, six each in Texas and Missouri, fifteen in Illinois, nineteen in Florida, just one in New York–they actually are still part of a conversation with Home Savings, carried on by its once-rivals that survive as well as by Chase, the steward of the largest number of these buildings.

Below I post the full details for these outside-California Home Savings branches with Sheets Studio art and architecture, to aid those in these communities in seeing their value and working to preserve them.

If an address brings you to this post, please contact me so I can connect you to the wider history of these buildings and their artwork.