Infinity

Overview

The first disco to make extensive use of neon lighting, opened November 5, 1975 by Maurice Brahms in a former envelope factory at 653 Broadway, NoHo, where Jim Burgess held a residency from 1977 until the night of February 14, 1979, when the building was deliberately set on fire, destroying the club.

Infinity opened on November 5, 1975 at 653 Broadway in NoHo, in a former envelope factory that Maurice Brahms had leased and renovated for roughly $150,000. Before the conversion, Hare Krishna members had occupied part of the building. Brahms outfitted the space with neon lighting designed by the firm Let There Be Neon (making Infinity the first disco anywhere to use neon on such a scale) and launched memberships with such success that not everyone who had paid could get in on opening night. The room placed itself between the Bleecker and Houston Street blocks of Broadway, occupying a downtown address that overlapped with the gay and mixed disco ecosystem anchored uptown by Le Jardin and in the west by 12 West. Jim Burgess began a residency at Infinity in 1977 and became the room's signature DJ; he went on to residencies at 12 West, the Saint, and Studio 54 and was widely considered one of the greatest disco DJs of the era, known for his arced narrative sets and his classical and film interludes. He retired from DJing in 1981 at age 28 and died of a brain tumor in 1993. Infinity itself did not survive to the end of disco: the building at 653 Broadway was deliberately set on fire on Valentine's Day, February 14, 1979, destroying the club. Maurice Brahms subsequently co-founded Bond's International Casino at 1530 Broadway in Times Square, which opened in July 1980.

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