Studio 54

Overview

The defining symbol of New York disco, where Rubell & Schrager turned a former opera house and CBS studio into a celebrity-packed, door-policed spectacle of excess, until the 1980 tax-evasion conviction shuttered the original.

254 West 54th Street is a Beaux-Arts hall built in 1927 as the Gallo Opera House (architect Eugene De Rosa), later the New Yorker Theatre, Casino de Paris and a WPA Federal Theatre, then a CBS radio and television studio from 1942 into the early 1970s. Syracuse classmates Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager leased it and transformed it in roughly six weeks for about $400,000, opening April 26, 1977. The design team, architect Scott Bromley, interiors by Ron Doud, sound by Richard Long, graphics by Gil Lesser, exploited the 85-foot ceiling, flying rigs and vast floor for spectacle (the 'Man in the Moon' with its neon coke-spoon). Rubell curated the velvet rope, mixing celebrities with chosen unknowns; regulars included Warhol, Halston, Liza Minnelli, Truman Capote, Calvin Klein, Bianca Jagger (whose May 1977 birthday brought a surprise white horse onto the floor), Grace Jones and Sylvester. A December 1978 federal raid led to a 1979 tax-evasion guilty plea; the 'End of Modern-Day Gomorrah' farewell came in February 1980, followed by roughly 13 months in prison. Mark Fleischman bought and reopened the club in 1981 (Madonna, Duran Duran) before it closed in 1986; Roundabout reopened the hall as a Broadway house in 1998, and the basement now operates as 54 Below.

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