DATELINE NEW YORK: A landmark spruces up (07/27/97)

DATELINE NEW YORK: A landmark spruces up

by Helen Smindak

For almost 100 years, the magnificent limestone building at the southeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 79th Street has served admirably as the home of three influential New York families and most recently as the prestigious address of the Ukrainian Institute of America.

Christopher Gray, who described the building's history and architecture in The New York Times last year, considers the mansion "astonishingly intact, even down to the woodwork in the servants' area." He says this remnant of Fifth Avenue's chateau days evokes the "New York mansion of a time when such buildings were just dinosaurs on their way to extinction."

In recent months, the building has been draped with scaffolding and netting as workmen tackled a roof repair project expected to cost $250,000: removing and replacing 25 percent of the slate, and repairing valleys and gutters around the dormers, where leaks have been developing.

Built in 1898 for banker/broker Isaac D. Fletcher, the mansion shows a French Gothic style characteristic of the work of C.P.H. Gilbert - a profusion of crockets, pinnacles, moldings and other details that, according to Mr. Gray, make Gilbert's elaborate Warburg House of 1907 at Fifth Avenue and 91st Street (now the Jewish Museum) seem "relatively chaste."

Mr. Fletcher left the house in 1917 to The Metropolitan Museum, which retained his art collection but sold the building to Harry F. Sinclair, the self-made oil prospector who founded the Sinclair Oil Co. Following the Teapot Dome scandals of the Harding Administration, which broke over him in the 1920s and his subsequent acquittal, Mr. Sinclair sold his home to Augustus Van Horne Stuyvesant Jr., a descendant of Gov. Peter Stuyvesant. Mr. Stuyvesant, who died in 1953, is buried in the family vault at St. Mark's-in-the-Bouwerie at Second Avenue and 10th Street, coincidentally, the present-day center of New York's Ukrainian section.

The Ukrainian Institute of America, founded in 1948 by inventor William Dzus, who came to this country as a young boy from the village of Chernychivtsi, western Ukraine, bought the house in 1955 as a center for the preservation of the culture, history, art and music of Ukraine. The building received national landmark status in 1978 from the U.S. Department of the Interior and has been listed in the New York State Register of Historic Places since 1981.

Though relatively unknown compared to most of the institutions along Fifth Avenue's "Museum Mile," the institute has played an important role in New York's Ukrainian cultural life for almost 50 years. In its early years it served as rehearsal space for Walter Bacad's Ukraine Dancers and as the home of the fledgling Ukrainian Museum (now located downtown on Second Avenue and soon to move into its own building on East Sixth Street).

Today a 400-member organization, the institute has developed a variety of programs, including literary evenings, sociopolitical lectures, academic seminars, press conferences, drama presentations and a regular season of first-rate musical soirees held under the banner of Music At The Institute (MATI). The Ukrainian Research and Documentation Center conducts its work there.

Recently, the institute's board of directors, headed since 1990 by Walter Baranetsky, agreed with Ukraine's Ministry of Culture to conduct a series of cultural events in New York featuring Kyiv's leading drama, vocal, music and cultural ensembles. The institute also works with the Embassy of Ukraine in Washington, Ukraine's Mission to the United Nations and the Consulate General of Ukraine in New York in conducting special meetings and exhibits.

Looking back on the institute's work and accomplishments, Mr. Baranetsky also sees the institute as "a colossal, undeveloped potential resource" that needs further exploration. There are also much-needed restoration projects for which funds will have to be raised: restoration of the elaborate cresting on the roof, and replacement of ventilation and plumbing systems and a troublesome complex of internal drainpipes from the roof.

With the current roof repair almost completed and scaffolding soon to be dismantled, Mr. Baranetsky and the board of directors, along with executive director Stephanie Charczenko, have been finalizing plans for a simultaneous celebration of the building's 100th anniversary and the institute's 50th birthday.

Beginning in October with an exhibit of Alexis Gritchenko's art work, festivities will include a November harvest tasting, a Christmas Around the World program, and, in 1998, a crafts fair in March, an exhibit of Jacques Hnizdovsky's work in April and an art auction in May. The MATI season is scheduled to open on October 25 with a Schubert program.

To help finance these programs and to obtain contributions for restoration work, a gala fund-raising event will take place on May 3, 1998, as the official celebration of the institute's anniversary season.

"We're really looking forward to a great year, to adding new members to our family, raising more funds, perhaps even setting up a permanent gallery, and sharing our culture with more people," Mr. Baranetsky declares. "As we accomplish all this, we will be making our founder's dreams come true."

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