It's a little more complicated than that. (This is way beyond the scope of Name That Store so what the heck...)rich wrote:Washington Mutual has offices of various sorts all over the country. They are the former "Home Savings" of L.A. Given that there are a lot of S&Ls called "Home Savings", they went with a different name.
In the mid 90s WaMu bought American Savings as one of their first forays outside the Pacific Northwest. They slowly started branding themselves as "American Savings, a Washington Mutual company." They did some market research that consumers had no problem with the name Washington Mutual so they decided to use the WaMu name. Meanwhile they also bought Great Western, again using "...a Washinton Mutual company". Gradually they started to convert the American Savings branches to the WaMu name and then integrate the Great Western branches.
While all this was happening Home Savings of America bought Coast Federal. But that was short-lived as on the exact same day that the former Coast Fed branches reopened as Home Savings, it was announced that WaMu was buying Home Savings. Of course they were all rebranded as Washington Mutual.
In Studio City, where I lived at the time, there was one of each of the 4 banks within a block at the corner of Ventura and Laurel Canyon. Today the former Home Savings contains the combined bank while GW became a realtor, Coast became a Banana Republic, and American Savings became a Union Bank of California.