Homeowner finds swastika, German eagle tiled into home
“I freaked out. My husband freaked out. I called my parents. We freaked out and were fit to be tied.”
Lynn Rae Wentworth thought she had found her dream home.
Wentworth, who grew up in Beaver County, moved to Washington, D.C. for college, where she met her husband. When they moved back to the area, they lived with her parents while looking for their “forever home.”
They thought they realized that goal when a house in Beaver became available.
“We looked at it and it sat on the market for a little while, and we went back and looked again and we finally decided we’d like to buy the house and redo it,” she said.
Wentworth calls herself a “historical house person.” Her husband, she said, is a “new construction person.”
The pair believed they found the best of both worlds: The house had the historical facade she was interested in while satisfying her husband’s itch to work on the inside and add onto it.
The couple made an offer after another potential buyer backed out and, despite the lack of a home inspection — which the former homeowner wouldn’t entertain — felt they had seen the house enough to feel comfortable buying it.
“We had been through it with a contractor and had scrutinized the disclosure statement,” Wentworth said. “We knew there was potentially lead paint. We read it from the perspective of those things you would look at, if the house was going to fall down or if there was something wrong with it.”
What the couple didn’t expect — what they didn’t even know they should look for — were hate symbols built into the home.
Shortly after moving into the house, Wentworth said, her nephew was working in the basement and pulled up a carpet remnant from the floor. A heavy table had been sitting on it when the couple initially looked at the home. Working in close proximity to the floor, her nephew didn’t notice anything peculiar, but when Wentworth made her way down the stairs and saw the floor from above, she noticed something tiled into it.
“I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh. That’s a swastika,’” she said. “I freaked out. My husband freaked out. I called my parents. We freaked out and were fit to be tied.”
It wasn’t just a swastika that was revealed, however. A Reichsadler eagle — a symbol associated with Nazi Germany — was also tiled into the floor.
After a call to their realtor confirmed they could not return the house, the couple sued the former homeowner, believing that the symbols constituted a material defect that the former homeowner had a duty to disclose.
Wentworth and her husband hired attorney Daniel Stoner, who sued for the cost of replacing the floor.
Stoner said that the former owner and his attorney, Albert Torrence, asserted that the swastika is an ancient symbol used by many cultures throughout the world and that it wasn’t a material defect.
In a letter to Stoner, Torrence said that Wentworth had full access to the home before buying it and while the symbols were covered, the rug wasn’t affixed to the floor and could have been moved at any time.
A judge agreed with Torrence and ruled against the couple, who are appealing the decision.
Wentworth believes the symbols negatively impact the value of her home and those of her neighbors.
In addition to having the symbols removed, Wentworth thinks there should be laws created to force a homeowner to disclose when there is a hate symbol inside a home they are selling.
“I don’t want anyone to have to go through this again,” she said. “Nobody wants a swastika in their home.”
The Chronicle was unable to reach Torrence before press time. PJC
David Rullo can be reached at drullo@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.
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