This is your last week to check out the Brooklyn Museum’s massive Studio 54: Night Magic exhibition chronicling the legendary nightclub’s three years of glamour, disco, and debauchery. On view are 650 objects documenting the venue’s history including photos, film, music, architectural plans, design sketches, ephemera, and lots of fabulous ‘70s era fashion.
Founded by two Brooklyn natives who met while attending Syracuse University, Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell, the club was housed in a former opera house at 254 West 54th Street. The Gallo Opera House, constructed in 1927, later became the WPA Federal Music Theatre, then the New Yorker Theatre in the 1930s. CBS took over the building in 1943, recording television shows such as What’s My Line?, The $64,000 Question, Password, and Captain Kangaroo from the vast network’s 52nd studio, Studio 52. In 1966, according to the Brooklyn Museum, the Velvet Underground recorded their first album in the same building. In 1977, Schrager, Rubell, and Jack Dushey, a business partner, leased 254 W 54th Street for their nightclub, dubbing it Studio 54 in reference to the street address.
The businessmen assembled an innovative creative team who worked for months to transform the space, incorporating the original theatrical architecture with luxe décor that accommodated evolving, elaborate sets and state-of-the-art sound and kinetic lighting systems. In lieu of disco balls and lit-up dance floors, which they considered outdated at the time, they hired set designers Richie Williamson and Dean Janoff to create the iconic Moon and Spoon graphic—an eight-foot wide crescent moon with a row of blinking lights leading from a coke spoon up to its nose. The moon adorned the back wall of the club as a cheeky wink to “the popularity of cocaine,” according to the museum.
Model Pat Cleveland dances in the Rhodes gown at Studio 54 in the Guy Marineau photo (1977) above the display.
When Studio 54 debuted on April 26, 1977, the club instantly became a Mecca for revelers from all walks of life, or as the museum puts it “people from different sexual, sociopolitical, and financial strata.” Preceding the onslaught of the AIDS epidemic, the club offered a place to experience “sexual, gender, and creative liberation, where every patron could feel like a star,” according to the press release. The venue was a late-night playground for the biggest celebrities of the day, from movie and television stars, artists, models, singers, dancers, rock stars, writers, fashion designers, and many more.
Despite its success—with desperate mobs trying to get past the doormen each night—shady business operations led to police raids of the venue which eventually landed Schrager and Rubell in prison briefly for tax evasion. (President Obama granted Schrager a full pardon in 2017.) The two were locked up in February 1980 and Studio 54 was sold in May of that year, with Schrager and Rubell staying on as consultants. The last hurrah they helped organize was a "Busby Berkeley-inspired" Sweet 16 birthday party for Calvin Klein’s daughter in October 1982. The pair went on to open another popular nightclub, the Palladium, as well as boutique NYC hotels including the Royalton and The Paramount.
Zandra Rhodes' pleated lame dress, 2019
Rubell contracted HIV and passed away from AIDS related illnesses in 1989. Schrager has continued his success as a hotelier, launching the Delano in Miami, the Mondrian in Los Angeles, and more recently Public in NYC’s Lower East Side.
Though only open for 33 months, Studio 54 has had an indelible influence on pop culture and sets an imposingly high bar for nightclubs and party promoters today. Do the hustle over to the Brooklyn Museum and be transported back to the extravagance of this boogie wonderland!
Studio 54: Night Magic
Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn
Closing November 8, 2020
Tickets: $20
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