The House Home Savings Built

What Howard Ahmanson Sr. Envisioned in the Days Before Koreatown

After doing his duty for the Navy in Washington D.C. during World War II, my father returned to Los Angeles, and my parents moved into the Talmadge Apartments between Western and Vermont. They’d been married for 17 years without having any children. So my father informally adopted his two nephews.

Around 1949, those nephews, who were students at UCLA, threw a party at the apartment. It was apparently a night to remember. The management decided to not renew my father’s lease. Shortly after that, my father’s wife announced, after nearly two …