Verbytsky, Oleksander

Verbytsky, Oleksander [Вербицький, Олександер; Verbyc'kyj], b 27 September 1875 in Sevastopol, Crimea, d 9 November 1958 in Kyiv. Architect; full member of the USSR Academy of Architecture. A graduate of the Saint Petersburg Institute of Civil Engineering (1898), he moved to Kyiv, where he worked as an architect for the Southwestern Railway (1901–33). He designed railway stations, depots, warehouses, hospitals, many country villas, and some apartment buildings in Kyiv in the Moderne style. He helped set up the Kyiv Architecture Institute in 1918 and taught there (1918–24) and at the Kyiv State Art Institute (1924–30, 1937–53) and Kyiv Civil-Engineering Institute (1930–7). He also designed the large hotel in what is now Khmelnytsky Square in Kyiv, a bridge across the Volga River in Gorkii (with Yevhen Paton), the Kyiv Railway Station (built in 1927–33), a grain elevator in Odesa, a sugar refinery in Verkhniachka, and a paper factory in Malyna. He enjoyed painting and produced many oils and watercolors. A book about Verbytsky by S. Kokhan and S. Kilesso was published in Kyiv in 1966.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]