Cuts Left Building in Form of Swastika

It looks like a swastika from the air, and budget cuts are to blame.

Wesley Place, a 100-apartment retirement home, is becoming a landmark in north Alabama because of its unusual shape. It was built in 1980-81 with a $2.5-million federal loan, but not according to its original specifications.

The Methodist denomination that owns the building isn’t happy with its shape, but there’s no money available to change it.

The unintended finish resulted from budget cuts, said the Rev. Wray Tomlin, executive director of Methodist Homes for the Aging. The plan had been to add screened porches that would have squared off the building.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development “kept cutting back on it because of cost containment, and that’s what it turned out to be,” Tomlin said.

Architect Thurston Sumner of Birmingham, said he was not aware the building looked like a swastika until The Decatur Daily brought it to his attention recently.

The shape bothers at least one resident. Inez Aycock said a young couple who drove her to the retirement home for the first time mentioned the shape. Ever since, she has been perplexed.

For her, it is a reminder of her patriotic betrayal of someone she had thought of as a friend. A German worked with her at the Alabama Hosiery mill in Decatur during World War II.

She described him as intelligent and kind. But when she saw he had drawn sketches of three area dams, she reported him to authorities.

“What could I do? I was just a kid,” Aycock said. “The security guards dragged him out of there so quick.”