White Elephant (Ukrainian: Білий слон, romanized: Bilyi slon; Polish: Biały Słoń) is an abandoned campus of the former Polish Astronomical and Meteorological Observatory of University of Warsaw, located at remote area on the peak of Pip Ivan in the Chornohora range of the Carpathian Mountains, Ukraine. Currently the structure is used as a mountain shelter with a small search and rescue team with some rooms adapted for lodging and recovery. Along with that Bialy Slon is recognized as a historical landmark and there are restoration activities on the way since 2012 to restore its original conditions in cooperation with the Ciscarpathian National University and the University of Warsaw and scheduled to be finished in 2018. It is considered to be the highest built residential structure in Ukraine. The closest settlement today is the village of Zelene in Verkhovyna Raion, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast. Currently the observatory is classified under the registration number three as a monument of cultural heritage that is not considered for privatization. The facility is located with the Carpathian National Nature Park. The region was part of the Second Polish Republic when the observatory was established during the interbellum period. Biały Słoń, started in 1937 and completed in the summer of 1938, was the highest-elevated, permanently inhabited, building in Poland. It was located on the international border between the Second Polish Republic and Czechoslovakia that stretched across mountain peaks of the Carpathian Mountains.
Polish observatory
Preparation and construction
According to Wladyslaw Midowicz, the first and only director of the observatory, the construction of "Biały Słoń" was suggested by a group of influential Warsaw astronomers who managed to convince General Leon Berbecki, director of the influential Airborne and Antigas Defence League, to support it. General Tadeusz Kasprzycki, minister of military affairs, also backed the construction of the observatory. The building design was approved sometime in 1935. Construction of the building began in the summer of 1936 with an official ceremony for the placing of the cornerstone. Biały Słoń was a very expensive structure with total costs exceeding one million Polish złoty, a huge burden on the state budget at the time. The design was based on the Przemyśl Castle and shaped like a letter "L" with a tower. The whole complex consists of three major features that could be considered as separate structure connected together: a tower, a main building, and smaller service attachment. Biały Słoń had five stories facing the Czechoslovak side (today Zakarpattia Oblast), and two stories facing the Polish side (today Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast). The whole complex was built mostly from local sandstone. Due to lack of roads, the construction materials were brought by horses, or either by hand or on the backs of local Hutsuls and soldiers of the 49th Hutsul Rifle Regiment from the Vorokhta train station located some 70 km (43 mi) away. The walls of a lower attachment and the semi-basement floor have a thickness of 1.5 m (4.9 ft), while upper floors - 1 m (3.3 ft). The roof of a building was covered with copper sheets. On the southern side there was a rotunda on which a telescope was located. The copper dome of the telescope opened automatically. Biały Słoń had 43 rooms, including a conference hall, living quarters, offices, a cafeteria, a battery station, and a boiler room in the basement (the lower structure). The upper floors were occupied by astronomers and meteorologists, most of whom worked for the State Meteorological Institute and Astronomical Observatory of the University of Warsaw. Their work was to carry out meteorological observations for the Polish Air Force. In the lower levels, there were lodgings for soldiers of the "Karpaty" Regiment of the Border Defence Corps, with headquarters in Stryj. Altogether, the number of inhabitants never exceeded 20. Among those who worked there were professor Wlodzimierz Zonn, doctor Jan Gadomski, and professor Eugeniusz Rybka.
Opening and operations
The opening ceremony of the building took place on 29 July 1938. Its official name was the "Observatory of the State Meteorological Institute", but soon it took on the nickname "Biały Słoń", due to the color of its walls. The observatory was lavishly equipped, with a custom-made astrograph and refracting telescope made by the British company Grubb Parsons of Newcastle upon Tyne. It had its own power plant with two diesel motor–generators and central heating fueled by oil, which was transported in iron barrels from the Polmin company in Borysław (today Boryslav). The military authorities also installed their own equipment, including two radiotelephone prototypes constructed to withstand high altitude. The observatory was located in a remote, deserted area, with the nearest store and mail office 12 miles (19 km) away (at Żabie, today Verkhovyna), the nearest doctor 30 miles (48 km) away, and a rail station in Kolomyia as far as 80 miles (130 km) away. The director of the observatory, Mykulychyn native Władysław Midowicz, wrote that the staff's main problem, however, was water, as no waterworks had been constructed and it had to be carried from a stream 4 miles (6.4 km) away. For fourteen months (July 1938-September 1939) the observatory was the highest-elevated, permanently inhabited, building in interbellum Poland. As entry was permitted only with a special military pass, local Hutsuls made up several legends about the building and its inhabitants. Wladyslaw Midowicz wrote that the Hutsuls thought that the observatory was in fact a mighty cannon, capable of attacking neighboring countries.
World War II and abandonment
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