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Chase Bank Aims to Raze Iconic New Formalist Building
July/August 2020
 4650 Mission Bay Drive, formerly Pacific Beach Home Savings and Loan branch. Photograph by Hunter Kerhart, 2017 |
 Interior mural depicting a stylized California landscape with horses. Photo by Adam Arenson, Millard Sheets Studio Art and Architecture at Risk in San Diego, Compton, and Victorville, April 28, 2020. https://adamarenson.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/San-Diego-Pacific-Beach-mural.jpg |
Chase Bank intends to demolish the Pacific Beach branch of the Home Savings and Loan bank, an iconic New Formalist style building from 1977, before it turns 45 years old. Chase, of course, is playing beat-the-clock to avoid that threshold for historic review under the San Diego Municipal Code. The building is notable for several large, striking exterior mosaics by a group of artists that includes Millard Sheets, a nationally renowned California artist, designer, and educator who died in 1989. If nothing else, at least Chase plans to relocate the mosaics elsewhere in the Pacific Beach community.
The building itself, at the busy intersection of Mission Bay Drive and Garnet Avenue, is a prominent and high-quality architectural landmark, with a seal sculpture in the front plaza. Eight exterior mosaics include six of relevant historical figures and two San Diego scenes. Inside the branch is a large mural depicting a stunning, stylized California landscape. In addition to Sheets, some of the artists who contributed to these works are Denis O'Connor, Susan Lautmann Hertel, Jude Freeman, and Pulani Seabile. For more information on Sheets, the associated artists, and their decades of work creating art for Home Savings and Loan branches, look HERE and HERE.
This branch is an excellent example of the New Formalist style, which is not yet represented on San Diego's historical register, and is also the only Home Savings and Loan building remaining within city limits. Architectural features include the prominent and repeated masonry arches, use of art throughout, and warm tones of terrazzo tile. Though modern, this building follows centuries of traditional bank architecture, embellished by art and facing the street to convey institutional stability and importance.
SOHO firmly believes this building is eligible for historical designation under the city's Criterion C, for exemplary architecture, with a specific focus on craftsmanship due to the hand-crafted and rare mosaics. SOHO is currently looking for solutions that would require a historical review of this iconic and beloved historic and artistic landmark.
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