It is official: Paul Rudolph's Art & Architecture building, which we've discussed at length recently, is no more. In its place, the Paul Rudolph Hall, the same building, just cleaned up a bunch and with Charles Gwathmey's not-so-hotly received new structure attached to it. Thanks to Archinect, we were pointed to the story in the Yale paper about this weekend's opening ceremonies, which apparently brought out more than 600 people, including Richard Levin and, of course, the school's dean of architecture and the reason for the facelift, Robert A.M. Stern, both of whom gave speeches and cut the ribbon. Here's a bit:

Stern made the opening remarks at the ceremony, calling the $130 million restoration a miracle of imaginative reinvention.

"Rudolph Hall rose like a phoenix from its own ashes," he said.

...The ceremony continued with a speech by Levin, who said Yale was atoning for past mistakes after having abused the Rudolph building for a long time.

"Yale is an internationally renowned center for the arts, housed in buildings by the greatest architects of the 20th century," Levin said. "It is our mission to preserve these buildings and to build new ones representing the work of the 21st century."