Just because I thought it was interesting- From The Tribune Review
Thelma J. Smith and her late husband faced a moral dilemma nearly 30 years ago: As black Americans, they had to decide whether they wanted a universal symbol of hate to remain imprinted on the front of their historic Hill District home.
The swastika was covered for decades by previous owners, and no one in the neighborhood, not even the Smiths until after they bought the house, knew it was there.
Thelma Smith thought of the Jewish neighbors, Holocaust survivors with concentration camp numbers tattooed on their arms.
What would they say? she asked herself.
More importantly, what would people in the community say?
The Smiths researched the subject. What they found, combined with what they knew about the house, swayed them.
The swastika predates Nazis by thousands of years. Before fascism, it was viewed as a good-luck symbol. The one in question was an original feature on a house that was then about 69 years old, the second-oldest home on an old street.
Smith, 72, had to explain all of that to the Jewish neighbors, who came to her upset but later agreed the swastika in this case is benign. It differs from the Nazi symbol in that it is not positioned at an angle.
"I just felt it was important historically to keep it," Smith said.
The house on Andover Place was built in 1912 for Herman S. Davis, who christened his new home "Swastika," according to a photograph album that Smith inherited from previous owners and the March 1913 issue of Concrete-Cement Age magazine, which featured a story on the house.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/pittsburgh/s_706957.html
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