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8/3/2019 Weatherby BlueHouse OverflowMag
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/weatherby-bluehouse-overflowmag 1/6
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.
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24
“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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