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  Essential Architecture- New England

Kline Science Center

architect

 Philip Johnson & R. Foster

location

 Yale U., New Haven, CT

date

 1962-66 (S:1966)

style

 Postmodern

construction

 Brick clad steel frame

type

 Office Building
 
  a: general view biology lab building, from angle, photo M. A. Sullivan.
 
  b: close view of base, biology lab building, photo M. A. Sullivan.
 
  c: general view, biology lab building, photo 1982, J. Cohen.
 
  d: close view of facade, biology lab building, looking upward, photo 1969, D. Stillman.
 
  e: geology lab building, photo 1969, D. Stillman.
 
  f: distant view, photo 1977, M. Clausen.
 
  g: exterior detail, photo 1977, M. Clausen.
The Kline Biology Tower, incorporating the Kline Science Library on its concourse level and research laboratories and a dining hall among its other 13 levels, was dedicated on October 28, 1966. The building, part of the Kline Science Center, was a gift of C. Mahlon Kline (Ph.B. in Chemistry from Yale's Sheffield Scientific School, 1901), with funds also coming from grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation (Ambler, S., "The Kline Biology Tower", Yale Scientific Magazine 1967 XLI(4):19). Describing this extraordinary development, in a letter dated April 28, 1964, Mr. James T. Babb [University Librarian] writes to Mr. Charles Taylor, Acting Provost, "John Ottemiller [Associate University Librarian] did most of the negotiating, both with the architect Mr. Johnson and the Science Department, with regard to the including of a library in the Biological Sciences building".

The collecting at KSL today is done in the areas of general science, biology, chemistry, physics, botany, zoology, and molecular biophysics and biochemistry. The original collection included items from the Osborn Zoological Library, the Osborn Botanical Library, the Bingham Oceanographic Laboratory Library, the Peabody Museum library, and the library of the Department of Molecular Biology and Biophysics. Materials from the History of Science Collection were integrated in 1992/1993. A number of endowments enables the library to collect materials in natural history, marine life, botany, limnology, and physical science.

Society of Architectural Historians

 Special thanks to the Society of Architectural Historians
for some of the images on this page (copyright SAH).
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