A view from the sky

Tom Holdsworth

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Tom Holdsworth

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Kline Tower’s brand-new 14th floor reception space at 219 Prospect Street is open for business. “People love it. They get off the elevator and run to the windows to see the view,” says Emily Roback, senior program director with Yale Conferences and Events. Just months after the place officially opened, it was “solidly booked for holiday parties.” It’s the tallest building on campus, and, thanks to architect Philip Johnson’s 1966 design, its floor-to-ceiling windows open onto a 360-degree view of New Haven.

Anyone can put in a request for the space, but priority goes first to departments based in Kline and secondly to other Yale community members. (Three days each week, it becomes a faculty lounge.) Reopened last September after a nearly four-year renovation, Kline is now home to the astronomy, mathematics, and statistics and data science departments, among others.

You may remember the view from the top of Kline when there was a cafeteria there from the 1960s to the early 2000s. But the vista is even more elevated now: two new floors were added to the top of the building as part of the renovation.