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8/3/2019 Weatherby BlueHouse OverflowMag

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byColinWeatherby.photosbySarahWilmer.

Blue

House T

by any standard. Located at 271 9th Street

Second Empire home painted in psychedelic

shades of orange and blue, distinctly out of placenext to the drab fast food joints and cinder-block

eyesores with which it shares the block. The

context of the building is also awkward, as it is

the home of Slope Music, a school that has been

building is a modern oddity with an idiosyncratic

of Park Slope’s storied past.

William B. Cronyn built the home in 1856 to escape

recently made a killing on Wall Street and threw his

tether across the East River deep into Brooklyn’s

unsettled backwaters. Nestled against a pastoral

hill overlooking the Gowanus Bay, Cronyn and his

gentry to put down roots in the newly-subdivided

depths of rural South Brooklyn.

In less than a decade, the estate became grossly out-

of-place. The area rapidly descended into a seething

grid of screeching trolley cars, horse manure, and

boilerplate working-class brownstones.

“It isn’t like the neighborhood began a slow

historian who has studied Park Slope extensively.

“They were instantly surrounded by canal workers

very shortly after the street cars came through. It

The once isolated and idyllic mansion was under

siege by the masses. The Cronyn family sold the

property six years after its completion and moved

to undoubtedly greener pastures.

The remnants of rural dreams are now limited to

the property’s relatively tiny footprint. The trees

bags, the inevitable fruits of a Brooklyn winter, yet

the house itself is an immaculate representation

of its original state. Current owners Charles

and Vita Sibirksy poured over the details of the

home, having renovated the facade extensively and

repairing the century-old ironwork.

The Sibirskys purchased the dilapidated mansionfrom a friend in 1981. They intended to house

their growing family, not realizing that they would

soon be living in the basement below their place

of business.

Charles began his career as a teacher at 17

while studying classical and jazz piano. Born in

Manhattan and raised throughout Brooklyn, he

was able to study with Sal Mosca, one of the

greatest New York pianists of the modern era. As

an avid performer, Charles did not expect to be

running a school from his home, but as middle-

class families poured into Park Slope throughout

the 1980s, business began to grow and expanded

employed dozens of teachers, and every corner

a unique approach to music education that seems

almost quaint by modern standards.

Charles with a smile. “I decided I didn’t want to be

them. It was quite a lesson for me. Everyone that

comes here has the chance to learn, whatever their

The unlikely transformation of the giant home

into a thriving business was not without precedent.Nearly a century before its most recent period

of dereliction, an opportunistic 19th century

potential in the property. Located only four blocks

from the Gowanus Canal, the home was an ideal

site for manufacturing, despite its inappropriate

Street address, and a factory was erected on the lot

directly behind the mansion. The business grew as

standard for quality printing as well as a household

name.

The ink industry outgrew the antiquated Brooklyn

manufacturers of Sharpie and Rolodex. The

mansion became just another casualty of mid-century urban decay and was taken by the City of

New York to be used as a halfway house until the

late 1970s.

Much of the home’s recent renovation was

performed by Eric Safyan, a Brooklyn-based

architect and family friend who attended high

school at Brooklyn Tech with the Sibirsky’s son,

Jacob. Most recently, Safyan has assisted in the

redesign of the entryway and repair of the iron

cresting along the front of the building.

“The house was a great early inspiration for me

wandering around all those rooms trying to decide

which was my favorite. The amount of work they

not hard to imagine at Slope Music. There are ten

pianos in the house, making the space an interesting

aural experience. The white noise of typewriters

and supply shipments has been replaced by a

mellow cacophony of major and minor scales

creak loudly and woodwind squawks punctuate

train rattles the foundation every 20 minutes just in

case it ever gets a little too quiet.

parlor. Vita has an equally impressive studio in

a lifetime of musical devotion. Eyes closed and

accommodating in general conversation, it is

obvious that he is most comfortable while tickling

letting it ring out as he quietly closes the fall and

runs a hand across the glossy oak.



22



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“Made in 1913. It’s the only concert

grand in the world that Steinway made

All of the instructors at Slope Music are

now independent contractors, renting

out rehearsal space by the hour. With

their children grown and the years

gaining, the Sibirskys have slowed

their schedule accordingly, but despite

the natural progression, Charles is

noticeably distracted by the trajectory

of musical performance in popular

culture. Whereas the school was once

overrun with children, nearly half of

the students today are adults. Many of

them are revisiting instruments they

played in their childhood. Interestfrom the current generation is simply

declining.

“If you had told me in 1975 that people

in the future would pay a guy thousands

of dollars to play records at their

wedding, I would have said you were

going on now. I guess I don’t quite get

As Charles begins to describe the

Brooklyn of his youth, it becomes

painfully clear that the role of music has

changed swiftly—yet subtly—in the 30

years since the school opened. Before

air-conditioning was popular, he would

walk around the neighborhood listening

to his students practice through open

windows. Every restaurant on Seventh

Avenue seemed to have a piano, and

live performers were common in the

evenings.

“There weren’t jazz clubs, there were

shrugging deeply.

Small details slowly began to outline a

musical culture wholly unrecognizable

to the modern Brooklynite.

Just as William Cronyn probably sat

in his window anxiously watching

the farmlands disappear, Charles

Sibirsky is understandably hesitant to

embrace the unfamiliar changes of his

period in Park Slope history, but rest

unknown future have already been

played. In a few short years, we’ll all be

singing the tune.

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