New York Observer writer Kim Velsey reviews Eric John Abrahamson’s Building Home: Howard F. Ahmanson and the Politics of the American Dream. Velsey describes the book as “a prequel to the housing horror movie that we have watched play out these last few years.” The book “chronicles a time when collaborations between the government and corporations […]
Los Angeles historian Adam Arenson is researching the history of Home Savings bank buildings and the fascinating relationship between Howard Ahmanson and Millard Sheets. His latest blog post looks at Sheets’s first project for Ahmanson, the National American Fire Insurance building on Wilshire. The building was torn down to make room for the Ahmanson Center. […]
Eric John Abrahamson will talk about Howard Ahmanson’s contributions to Southern California and the politics of the American dream in a presentation at the Autry Museum in Los Angeles on Saturday, March 16 from 2:00 – 4:00 p.m. As the sole owner of Home Savings & Loan, the largest thrift in the country in the […]
Howard Ahmanson’s life provides an “ideal lens through which to view some of the most momentous developments in America following the war,” according to historian Robert Bruegmann, who reviewed Building Home: Howard F. Ahmanson and the Politics of the American Dream for the Wall Street Journal. In a succinct summary of the narrative and the main […]
Millard Sheets played an important part in cultivating Howard Ahmanson’s interest in art and in the role that art and culture play in commerce and community. An important chapter in Building Home: Howard F. Ahmanson and the Politics of the American Dream explores this relationship. Historian Adam Arenson is also looking at this relationship for […]
The number of residential foreclosures declined 21 percent in December, compared to December 2011. According to data released by CoreLogic, a leading residential property analyst, 56,000 residential foreclosures were completed in December, down from 71,000 in December 2011. Meanwhile, the total inventory of properties in the national foreclosure inventory declined 19.5 percent. “Since the financial […]
A new study by the U.S. Census shows a dramatic difference in rates of homeownership among the foreign-born in the United States. Naturalized citizens have a rate of homeownership that is nearly twice that of noncitizen households (66 versus 34 percent). The report also shows a strong correlation between the length of time that the […]
The rate of homeownership in the United States continued a multi-year decline in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to data released by the U.S. Census. Homeownership was down a tenth of a percent to 65.4 percent. The rate has dropped almost four percent from its peak of 69.2 in the fourth quarter of 2004. For […]
Building on his continuing interest in the changing mix of institutions within the American economy, Eric John Abrahamson will join Jody Severson at the Journey Museum in Rapid City at 2 p.m. on Sunday, February 3, 2013 to talk about the history of competition between rural electric cooperatives and investor-owned utilities. The public is welcome.
The Rockefeller Foundation celebrates its centennial in 2013. The Foundation and its Centennial partner, Teneo Strategy, have hired Vantage Point to develop a series of six books that explore lessons learned over the course of the Foundation’s history. The first of these six books, Beyond Charity: A Century of Philanthropic Innovation, written by Eric John […]