uk disco party @ artys by dj gizzo - 2

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Studio 54 was a New York City discothèque located at 254 West 54th Street in Manhattan. It opened on April 26, 1977 and closed in March 1986. It briefly reopened in 1994 after a multi-million dollar renovation. It currently serves as a venue for the Roundabout Theatre Company, with a 900 seat theatre equipped with two full service bars. The original doors with the Studio 54 logo still remain. The theatre originated as the Gallo Opera House by Fortune Gallo in 1927 for his San Carlo Opera Company. It opened on Feb 7, 1927 with the opera 'La Boheme'. It did not make it as an opera house; over the course of the next decade changed its name several times. It became known as the New Yorker Theatre in 1930, booking Ibsen's play 'The Vikings', but remained unsuccessful. From 1933 to 1936 it became a dinner theatre called the 'Casino de Paree' managed by Billy Rose. It was then the Palladium Theatre in 1936. The Federal Theatre project leased it for its productions and changed its name to the Federal Music Theatre in 1937. The Chicago Federal Theatre achieved success here with its production of 'Swing Mikado', a jazzy version of the Gilbert and sullivan operetta. Later in 1937, the name was changed back to the New Yorker Theatre. CBS Studio 52 This name would remain until CBS purchased the facility in 1942, renaming it Studio 52 (CBS named its studios in order of purchase and the number had nothing to do with the street). From the 1950s to the mid-1970s, CBS used the location as a radio and TV stage that housed such shows as What's My Line?, The $64,000 Question, Password, To Tell the Truth, Beat the Clock, The Jack Benny Show, I've Got a Secret, Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour, Captain Kangaroo, and the ill-fated CBS version of the Johnny Carson Show.[3] The soap opera Love of Life was produced there until 1975. In 1976, CBS concentrated most of its New York broadcast functions around the corner to its storied Ed Sullivan Theater (CBS-TV Studio 50) or west to the CBS Broadcast Center, and sold Studio 52. The Ed Sullivan Theater once had access to Studio 54 through an access door which was cinder-blocked during the Theater's Late Night with David Letterman renovation. However, it is possible that the door that was covered was, in fact, leading to an MTA utility building, instead of the Sullivan Theater. When CBS began marketing the building in 1976, various interests in the art and fashion world pushed for turning it into a trendy disco, including male model Uva Harden, who tried to get gallery owner Frank Lloyd to finance the club, until Lloyd lost a $9 million lawsuit to the estate of the artist Mark Rothko. Carmen D'Alessio, a Valentino public relations agent who had been throwing fashionable parties, encouraged Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, who were operating the Enchanted Garden at 63-20 Marathon Parkway in Queens, to make the leap into Manhattan. D'Alessio had "reluctantly" hosted parties outside of Manhattan at the Queens venue and had been profiled in Newsweek Magazine for doing so. She was to introduce Rubell and Schrager to the jet set crowd including a pre-opening dinner with Andy Warhol, Halston, and Calvin Klein. In 1977 the building was purchased and renamed for its street address, 254 West 54th Street, between Broadway and Eighth Avenue, a location already noted for another tenant in the building, famed disco record label West End Records, as well as being the former home of Scepter Records.
D'Allessio, after working in Rome and around Europe as a fashion PR, was well connected in the fashion, music, and film scenes; and generally with the kind of "A" list jetsetters, movers and shakers, and celebrities, from across the United States, South America, Europe and other parts of the world who would be ideal patrons. Harden was pushed out of the project, and Rubell and Schrager gave D'Alessio much of the control for the design and promotion of the club.
Before the April 26, 1977 opening, D'Alessio sent out 5,000 invitations to her exclusive mailing list together with an enticing surprise gift to each of her invitees. Liz Smith, Cindy Adams, and other New York gossip columnists announced to the world the coming of something big

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