Concept
Studio 54 is a Broadway theater and a former disco nightclub at 254 West 54th Street in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Operated by the Roundabout Theatre Company, Studio 54 has 1,006 seats on two levels. The theater was designed by Eugene De Rosa for producer Fortune Gallo and opened in 1927 as the Gallo Opera House. The current Broadway theater is named after a nightclub founded by Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, which operated within the theater's space in the late 1970s and the 1980s. Plans for the Gallo Opera House announced in 1926, and it opened on November 8, 1927, as a legitimate theater and opera house for the San Carlo Grand Opera Company. The theater went bankrupt within two years and was renamed the New Yorker Theatre in 1930. The Casino de Paree nightclub operated at the theater from December 1933 to April 1935, and the theater briefly hosted the Palladium Music Hall in early 1936. The Federal Music Project took over the theater in 1937 and presented shows there for three years. CBS began using the theater as a soundstage called Radio Playhouse No. 4 in 1942; when television broadcasts began in 1949, the theater was renamed Studio 52. Schrager and Rubell took over the venue in 1976, retaining much of the former theatrical and broadcasting equipment while turning it into a nightclub. The club opened on April 26, 1977, as disco was gaining popularity in the U.S. The original iteration of Studio 54 was noted for its celebrity guest lists, restrictive and subjective entry policies, extravagant events, rampant club drug use, and open sexual activity. Schrager and Rubell's club was short-lived and controversial, and it closed in early 1980 after the men were convicted of tax evasion. Mark Fleischman operated a scaled-down version of the nightclub from 1981 to 1986, after which it continued to operate under new management for three more years. Studio 54's space housed the Ritz rock club from 1989 to 1993, then the Cabaret Royale bar from 1994 to 1996.
