Ivan Levynskyi was born 1851 in Dolina (today in Dolyna, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast), as the son of a Ukrainian national school director.

In 1874 he graduated with honours from construction faculty of the Lemberg Technical Academy (today Lviv Polytechnic), to which he enrolled back in 1868.

[1] It was this technical education, combined with his father’s love of folk art, which would lead Levinsky to start his own artistic pottery company.

Soon after he hired professional potters and ceramists and by 1894 his company featured 25 employees making tiles, bricks, vases, sculptures, and other building materials.

Working together with such esteemed architects as H. Helmer and F. Fellner, they also designed the Galicia Pavilion at the World Exhibition in Paris, the Chamber of Commerce, and many of Lviv’s hotels and banks.

However, at the end of World War I, the Polish authorities refused to pay for the Levinsky’s Austrian orders and his company collapsed as a result.

Remembered as a gifted architect, cunning businessman, effusive philanthropist, and a true patriot, Levinsky is today considered to be the Man Who Built Lviv.

His pièce de résistance, however, remains Lviv’s spectacular Opera & Ballet Theatre, of which his building company provided local materials for the undertaking.