54, the Club : Behind the Scenes

Studio 54: Night MagicFor thirty-three months, from April 1977 to February 1980, the legendary nightclub Studio 54 emerged as a beacon of glamour and euphoric celebration amid difficult times.

The disco craze of the 1970s offered respite as the United States was emerging from the Vietnam War, embroiled in the Watergate scandal, and rocked with ongoing liberation struggles for racial, gender, and sexual equality.

Locally, New York City was on the brink of bankruptcy, and much of the city was in visible disrepair. Low rents attracted artists, designers, and musicians with high ambitions who embraced Andy Warhol's mantra that "success was a job in New York." This influx of talent would galvanize New York City's growing music scene.

Armed with instruments, turntables, and vinyl records, musical innovators invented punk in Queens, hip-hop in the South Bronx, and disco throughout the boroughs, especially Manhattan.

Studio 54, with its unexpected, ever-changing scenery and its dynamic soundscape, was at the pinnacle of these creative explorations.

Its heady party atmosphere has become famous through both real and sensationalized accounts. Studio 54: Night Magic tells the story of how Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell, two Brooklyn-born entrepreneurs, transformed a former opera house and television studio into one of the twentieth century's most celebrated nightclubs.

Studio 54 was a space of liberation, where people from diverse sexual, sociopolitical, and financial strata could find refuge and commonality, whether by taking a star turn on the dance floor or by voyeuristically observing the scene. During its brief though historic years of operation, Studio 54 hosted celebrity-studded birthdays, anniversaries, New Year's Eve parties, record launches, film premieres, and many spectacular disco nights.

The images and stories of those fabled months continue to inspire the worlds of fashion, beauty, photography, music, and film today.