The owners of popular SoHo event venue Skylight have opened a new place in Midtown. Home to the Mini rooftop promotion for a two-week stretch during Fashion Week last month, Skyline Studios & Gallery is a three-floor venue housed in an unmarked brick building. And although the owners are still tweaking some of the site's components—adding passenger elevators, installing permanent flooring on the roof, and renovating the lobby on the ground floor—Skyline is currently available for events.
Located across the street from Exit Art and only a couple of blocks from the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, Skyline is a newly renovated space that showcases some of the building's original industrial features, including concrete floors and ceilings, a freight elevator large enough for a small car, and terra-cotta walls and slate steps in the stairwell. With approximately 22,500 square feet of space, the venue offers a lobby-level gallery, a columned studio on the sixth floor, and a rooftop with views of the Empire State Building as well as the Hudson River.
The lobby space, also known as the gallery, offers 17-foot ceilings, concrete flooring, and drive-in access. In addition to plans for a 36th Street entrance to complement the current one on 10th Avenue side, the venue will add two passenger elevators to provide direct access to the sixth floor and rooftop.
The room on the sixth floor is more like Skylight—a blank space that can be modified with lighting, decor, and staging. There are 13-foot ceilings on this level as well as some some details from the building's industrial history such as oil stains beneath the glossy sheen of the concrete floor and raw, unadorned ceilings. This section holds 350 for receptions or 250 seated for dinner and dancing. Included in the rental of the sixth floor is the rooftop, which features a 20- by 60-foot billboard, perhaps Skyilne's most unusual component. This large structure can be used for projections and signage, and the elevated floor beneath it can be utilized as a stage. The rooftop holds 200 for receptions.
Wall Street Productions and Bentley Meeker Lighting & Staging are Skyline's in-house vendors.
