Sławiński's Mural on the move at Graycliff

by Peter K. Gessner

In the Polish Arts Club's continuing efforts to safeguard Polonia's artistic heritage, Jozef Sławiński's St. Calasanctius mural was successfully removed on Monday from the dormitory building on the Graycliff Estate located in Derby, NY. The Estate and the summer home that Frank Lloyd Wright built on it in the 1920's for Buffalo industrialist Darwin D. Martin and his wife is being restored by the Graycliff Conservancy, Inc. to the original Wright plan.

Removal of the 12 by 18 foot mural, which Sławiński created in 1967, was necessitated, if this outstanding work of art by the Polish sgraffito artist was to survive, because the building which it graced, not being part of the original Frank Lloyd Wright design, is scheduled for demolition. In a major art salvage operation, the like of which the Greater Buffalo area has not seen in many a year, the Williamsville's International Chimney Corporation's team, led by Josef Jakubik, labored for three weeks to safely remove the mural from the side of the building's second floor.

Because the mural was created as an integral part of the building's wall, the only way in which it could be saved was to remove it together with the section of the cement block wall to which it was attached. As the work proceeded, it became apparent that the wall, which extended some six feet above the building's roof-line, was not continuous, the upper part having been built on the roof. As a consequence, the wall did not possess the needed rigidity and could have easily jackknifed onto the mural once cut off from the rest of the building.

Faced with this unforseen problem, Jakubik, the man who had earlier been in charge of the International Chimney Corporation's move of the Cape Hatteras lighthouse 1000 feet inland, decided that a three inch reinforced concrete wall had to be added to the back of the existing concrete wall so as to create a single unit. To lift this now much heavier mural, the team found it necessary to fabricate and permanently install on the wall side of the unit six "C" steel I -beam frames that would allow a single I beam to be bolted to the top of the unit. It was with cables attached to the latter that the large crane from Clarke Rigging in Niagara Falls was able to lift the mural off the building and lower it onto a flatbed truck.

The work necessitated by these unforseen complication have increased the costs of saving the mural by an estimated $20,000. As a consequence the Club's fundraising efforts, which had successfully resulted in $110,000 in obtained or promised funds from Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo, the M&T, the Bay, the Kosciuszko and the Margaret L. Wendt Foundations, generous individual from Hon. Frank R. Bayger, Gerald T. Mazurkiewicz and many others and State funds resulting from the Local Initiatives by Senators George D. Maziarz and Dale M. Volker and the Western New York Assembly Majority Delegation chaired by Arthur O. Eve will have to be resumed.

Also, the addition of the reinforced concrete wall and the "C" steel I -beam frames have rendered the wall to which the mural is attached much stronger but also much thicker. That and the resulting greater height of the combined object have made it too large to place it, as had been originally planned, in one of the glassed-in vestibules of Assumption Church on Amherst Street.

Consequently the Polish Arts Club is negotiating with other institutions, notably among them Buffalo State College where Sławiński was a Professor, for a location to which the mural can be moved, envisaging that it will be housed in a free standing structure that the Club will construct to protect it while at the same time providing full visual access to it for visitors and art lovers. Donations should be made out to the St. Calasanctius Mural Fund and sent c/o the Polish Arts Club of Buffalo, 3210 Main Street, Suite 4, Buffalo, NY 14214.