Swastika-like symbol on building
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Question: Why is there a swastika near the top of the apartment building on the corner of Lyndhurst Place and Rose St.?
Answer: The internet is full of reports from people who spot swastika shapes on buildings.
The Wesley Acres retirement home in Decatur, Alabama is shaped like a swastika from the air.
There’s also a swastika-shaped barracks at Naval Base Coronado in San Diego. The Navy said it would spend about $600,000 to alter the building, which opened in the 1960s.
According to Encyclopædia Britannica, the swastika was not always a symbol of oppression:
“The swastika as a symbol of prosperity and good fortune is widely distributed throughout the ancient and modern world. The word is derived from the Sanskrit svastika, meaning “conducive to well-being.”
It was a favorite symbol on ancient Mesopotamian coinage. In Scandinavia the left-hand swastika was the sign for the god Thor’s hammer. The swastika also appeared in early Christian and Byzantine art (where it became known as the gammadion cross, or crux gammata, and it occurred in South and Central America (among the Maya) and in North America (principally among the Navajo).
In the Buddhist tradition the swastika symbolizes the feet, or the footprints, of the Buddha. It is often placed at the beginning and end of inscriptions, and modern Tibetan Buddhists use it as a clothing decoration. With the spread of Buddhism, the swastika passed into the iconography of China and Japan, where it has been used to denote plurality, abundance, prosperity, and long life
In Nazi Germany the swastika (German: Hakenkreuz), with its oblique arms turned clockwise, became the national symbol. In 1910 a poet and nationalist ideologist Guido von List had suggested the swastika as a symbol for all anti-Semitic organizations; and when the National Socialist Party was formed in 1919–20, it adopted it. On Sept. 15, 1935, the black swastika on a white circle with a red background became the national flag of Germany. This use of the swastika ended in World War II with the German surrender in May 1945, though the swastika is still favored by neo-Nazi groups.”
I drove past the apartment complex and there at the top of the building is a symbol resembling a swastika. The symbol appears to be a part of the brick work on the building and is not painted on as I first thought.
The name of the building is Roselynd Apartments located at 281 Lyndhurst Place.
The building owner, Carol Brooks, says the building was built before 1922, before the symbol was recognized as belonging to the Nazi party of Germany.
Linda Niemi
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My mother was a public school librarian. I earned a bachelor’s degree in music and a master’s degree in library and information science from the University of Kentucky. The Herald-Leader hired me as a news assistant 25 years ago; soon after, I moved to the news research department, where I’ve been ever since. We used to clip newspapers. Now, almost all of our research is online. We've come a long way.
It’s fairly obvious that the building was constructed prior to WWII, when Hitler’s use of the swastika turned it from a good luck symbol into one of death and evil.
Oftentimes architectural decorative details know as Greek frets are mistaken for swastikas. The swastika, basically, is just a Greek fret set at an angle. Nazi Germany pretty much ruined the use of Greek frets in decorative detailing. Most buildings with Greek frets pre-date the Nazi Era, as in this case.