Development could spell end for Kyivan national monument
It’s a Kyiv jewel: a place where important astronomic discoveries have been made, and a national monument. But the 160-year-old Kyiv Observatory has fallen under an unlucky star, and is being threatened by development.
With a 12-story apartment block planned for the Observatory’s grounds, many of its buildings will be razed, and its scientists are up in arms. The new buildings “will make normal work impossible,” said Yaroslav Yatskiv, president of the Ukrainian Astronomic Association.
How this historically rich and idyllic site became fair game for construction is a story about a new Kyiv where the need for development can run headlong into the urge to preserve the city’s character.
Long history
The Observatory is one of the city’s most venerable institutions, dating to the early years of what is now Kyiv National Shevchenko University.
Built between 1841-45, it was where “solar wind” was theorized after World War II, and where sunspots were discovered – both with huge consequences for astrophysics. A Kyiv Observatory researcher in the 1960s proved that rings encircle not only Saturn, but also other large planets. These days, in addition to high-level research, Kyiv’s astronomers also perform the more mundane but crucial tasks of measuring the city’s radiation and exhaust levels.
Now some observatory facilities will face the wrecking ball so that elite apartments can be built: three buildings of 12 stories each, and each with an underground garage.
Viktor Skopenko, rector of Shevchenko University, calls the project “reconstruction,” and says it’s necessary for the university’s bottom line. Budgets are drying up and the once economically self-sufficient Observatory is no longer adequately contributing to the university’s bottom line.
But astronomers and Observatory workers say reconstruction means the end of their institution as they have known it.
Those who spoke to the Post did so only on condition of anonymity; they’re afraid that if the Observatory administration finds out who they are, they’ll be forced to keep quiet, and they want to continue speaking out. “We are not afraid for ourselves,” one employee said. “We’ve got nothing to lose. What really pains us is the fate of the Observatory.”
Tree blight
This February employees at the Observatory suspected something was up when Kyiv communal services teams began to frequent the landmark, inspecting the state of the buildings, the fire safety arrangements, sewage system conditions, and so on.
They also soon discovered that a company called TMM had paid Hr 7,000 for a report about the Observatory’s architectural and historical value from the Ukrainian Scientific Research Center on Architectural Heritage. Obtaining such a report from experts is standard procedure before construction, renovation, or demolition work is done.
Next Kyivzelenbud agency workers arrived with chainsaws, claiming that TMM had paid Hr 150,000 in order to “clean” the Observatory’s territory of sick and dangerous trees.
“We almost physically ousted them,” said a source at the Observatory. “We stood under each tree and said that if they wanted to cut them, they would have to start with us.”
Suspicious Observatory staff consulted an independent commission from the Fomin Botanical Garden about the razed trees. The commission determined that only a fraction of the total of all trees felled around the Observatory by Kyivzelenbud actually needed to be cut, perhaps costing as much as Hr 15,000. Instead Kyivzelenbud had felled nearly ten times the amount deemed scientifically necessary by the independent commission. So why was the state park service agency paid to fell nearly Hr 135,000 more worth of trees than was necessary?
The situation seemed clear.
Kharkiv-based TMM, the company responsible for the reconstruction, has also erected buildings at 2A Lysenka and 3 Timofeyeva in Kyiv’s Shevchenkivsky region. The latter is Kyiv’s first penthouse building: a well-heeled address with terraces, a separate elevator for the top apartments and a swimming pool. The firm is also building an apartment, office and trade center on the corner of Saksahanskoho and Shevchenko near the Circus, and an apartment complex at 49 Volodymyrska, near Kyiv’s Golden Gate. TMM says it will make available 150,000 square meters of housing in the next two years.
TMM foresees the preservation of only the main Observatory’s main building – even though the entire site is a national monument, with guaranteed state protection. The rest of the buildings, including the original telescope stations, architectural treasures in their own right, will be demolished.
This struck Observatory workers as a shock. “Nobody had ever told us anything, never asked our opinion,” said the observatory source.
Alarmed, employees wrote a letter to Skopenko, who responded by visiting the Observatory for the first time in his 12-year tenure as rector.
“He was putting us to shame, saying we were defaming the University” by protesting, the source said.
Skopenko, a chemist by profession, reportedly announced that the Observatory was in a poor state. All these “barns, chaotically scattered on its territory,” were to be torn down, in the source’s words.
Each “barn,” it turns out, houses an eight-meter-deep basement full of astronomical equipment. Some go back to the middle of the 19th century, and each has a sliding roof that retracts to expose the sky.
No compromise possible
Skopenko and TMM’s compromise solution, sources say, was to place the facility’s telescopes on the roofs of the new apartment buildings. That suggestion was not taken seriously.
Suggestions to temporarily move to another observatory in the Holosiyivsky forest or build a new station near the University’s physics department campus in Teremki were considered unfeasible. Building an observatory is not easy, and can’t be done anywhere; the Observatory’s current location on the corner of Observatorna and Vorovskoho in the city center is one of Kyiv’s tallest points, at 170 meters, beyond the reach of most atmospheric interference. By contrast, the university’s physics department is located on flat terrain near city highways and bright street lights.
Besides, Observatory sources say, the facility can’t realistically be packed up and moved across town.
“Many of our telescopes and instruments are old – some as old as the Observatory itself,” the source said. “But the fact that it’s old doesn’t mean it’s bad. This is high quality, well-settled and well-studied equipment. Due to the efforts of our staff, it’s all in good condition, working and modernized. But it can’t be moved, they say; it won’t survive.”
Another view
TMM’s general director sees things differently.
“We believe that a scientific observatory cannot exist within the city boundaries,” he told the Post.
He added: “The scientific world knows that astronomical observatories don’t exist in big cities, as exhaust fumes, vibrations and noises hinder the observations. Ukraine’s best observatory is the Crimean Observatory, located on Ai Petri.”
“Besides, the Kyiv Observatory’s equipment is not simply obsolete – it’s a sheer anachronism that has a purely historical significance as a museum object,” he said.
He also expressed an opinion, with which many scientists would disagree: “Today the Observatory can be used only on a daily, amateur level, as it doesn’t correspond to any modern scientific standards.”
