The U.S. post office to which Mr. Buhr refers to (see below) was designed by
Frederick Joseph Delongchamps who was prolific in a number of building
designed by him in downtown Reno.  Approximately 11 years ago, the local
Jewish community was up in arms regarding the "swastika" embellishments to
the PO's interior design and wanted them removed, despite their historic
nature.  The SHPO and an historian from the USPO Washington office met with
the group and finally convinced them that the designs were not
representative of or influenced by the Nazi regime, but rather typical of
architectural design elements of the time.


> In regard to swastikas being used in instances other than Nazi and
> neo-Nazi contexts, our downtown post-office in Reno, which I believe was
> built in 1937, has small swastikas as decorative elements on some of the
> interior trim.  Some of them have the arms bent counter-clockwise while
> some are bent clockwise like the Nazi versions though all rest flat
> unlike the Nazi-type, in which the central arms form an 'X'.  This
> building is a well-preserved example of Deco-influenced Federal
> architecture, suggesting that in the pre-WWII period, swastikas were a
> basic element of American design repertoire.
>
> Larry Buhr
> University of Nevada, Reno