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July 6, 1851

Born on July 6, 1851, in the Galician town of Dolyna, near Stanyslaviv (now Ivano-Frankivske), Ivan Levynsky graduated from the Lviv Technical Academy in 1875 and soon after opened his own architectural firm, a building materials company and an artistic pottery studio. He became a professor of architecture at the Lviv Polytechnical Institute in 1903.

Levynsky designed and built many of Lviv's public buildings in the Moderne style, into which he incorporated motifs from Ukrainian folk architecture and ornamentation. Among the landmarks he contributed to the city are the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the main railway station, the George ("Zhorzh") Hotel, the Dnister Insurance Company Building (1905), the student residences of the Ukrainian Pedagogical Society and the Akademychnyi Dim, and the Lysenko Higher Institute of Music (1916).

He also designed and built hospitals and sanatoria in the Galician capital, in Horodenka, Kolomyia, Ternopil, Vorokhta, Zalishchyky and Zolochiv.

Levynsky was a founding member of the Prosvita Society and a patron of the Postup Society for workers' enlightenment, the Osnova Student Society and the Silskyi Hospodar Society. He was a member of the board of the National Museum.

Deported to Kyiv in 1914 by the retreating Russian imperial authorities, the indefatigable Levynsky founded the Pratsia agronomic and technical society there in 1917 and built a Ukrainian Catholic church in the Hutsul style.

He returned to Lviv in 1918, founded a branch of the Pratsia society there. He died on July 4 of the following year.

Source: "Levynsky, Ivan," Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vol. 3 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993).

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, June 30, 1996, No. 26, Vol. LXIV

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