Levynsky, Ivan

Levynsky, Ivan [Левинський, Іван; Levyns'kyj], b 6 July 1851 in Dolyna, Stanyslaviv county, Galicia, d 4 July 1919 in Lviv. Architect; father of Stepan Levynsky. A graduate of the Lviv Technical Academy (1875; see Lviv Polytechnic National University), he opened an architectural firm, a building-materials company, and an artistic pottery studio in Lviv. There he designed and built many public buildings in the Moderne style, in which he incorporated motifs from Ukrainian folk architecture and ornamentation. They include the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the main railway station, the George Hotel, hospitals, clinics, the building of the Dnister Insurance Company (1905), the student residence of the Ukrainian Pedagogical Society, the Akademichnyi Dim student residence, the Narodnia Hostynnytsia building, the building of the Lysenko Higher Institute of Music (1916), and the new building of the Academic Gymnasium of Lviv. He also designed and built sanatoriums and hospitals in Vorokhta, Zolochiv, Kolomyia, Zalishchyky, Horodenka, and Ternopil. Levynsky was a patron of the Postup society for workers' enlightenment, the Silskyi Hospodar society, the Osnova student society, and other associations; a founding member of the Prosvita society; and a member of the board of the National Museum. In 1903 he became a professor of architecture at the Lviv Higher Polytechnical School. During the 1914 Russian retreat from Galicia he was deported to Kyiv. There after the February Revolution of 1917, he founded the Pratsia agronomic and technical society and built the wooden Ukrainian Catholic church in the Hutsul style. After returning to Lviv in 1918, he founded the Pratsia society there.

Sviatoslav Hordynsky

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]