Studio 54

Studio 54 is a 1,006-seat Broadway house on West 54th Street in Midtown Manhattan. The nonprofit Roundabout Theatre Company has run it since 1998 and owned it since 2003; it is one of the company's three Broadway stages, with the Todd Haimes Theatre and the Stephen Sondheim Theatre. It hosts both musicals and plays, often two a season.

The building has had many lives: opera house, Depression-era nightclub, federal music stage, CBS broadcast studio and the disco whose name, borrowed from the street, it still carries. Two small cabaret rooms share the building, 54 Below in the basement and Upstairs at Studio 54 on the second floor.

Fortune Gallo, an opera impresario who managed the touring San Carlo Opera Company, commissioned the house. It opened as the Gallo Opera House in November 1927, with the San Carlo troupe singing La bohème. Plays followed, and in 1928 Rainbow, a musical by Laurence Stallings and Oscar Hammerstein II, lasted less than a month. The venture soon failed; after a foreclosure sale in December 1929, the house reopened in 1930 as the New Yorker Theatre.

During the Depression the room turned into the Casino de Paree nightclub, with revues by Billy Rose, and from 1937 a WPA stage for opera and concerts. Medicine Show, in April 1940, was its last Broadway production for almost six decades.

CBS took a lease in August 1942, first for radio and from 1949 as television Studio 52. A subway power substation next door caused so much magnetic interference that the network needed shielded cameras. Audiences watched What's My Line? and Password being taped here; the soap opera Love of Life was the last to leave, in 1975.

The nightclub run by Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager opened on April 26, 1977. Celebrity guests, lavish parties and a door that turned many hopefuls away kept it in the gossip columns until both owners pleaded guilty to tax evasion and went to prison in early 1980. Later tenants included the Ritz rock club, and Allied Partners bought the property at auction in 1994.

Broadway returned almost by accident. In July 1998 a construction hoist collapsed at 4 Times Square, cutting off Henry Miller's Theatre, home of Roundabout's revival of Cabaret. The production moved here that November and stayed until January 2004, reaching 2,377 performances across both houses. Later seasons brought Assassins in 2004, a return of Cabaret in 2014, Sweat and Kiss Me, Kate.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission studied the building in the 1980s but did not designate it, so Studio 54 is not an official landmark. In May 2026 Roundabout launched a capital campaign that includes the first full overhaul of the theater in about a century; in the summer of 2026 the plan was still in the city's land-use review.

Eugene De Rosa, a New York theater specialist who also drew the Times Square and Apollo theaters on 42nd Street, set the auditorium at the foot of a 16-story office building. To stay clear of work on the Eighth Avenue subway line, engineer David M. Oltarsh hung the shell holding the orchestra and balcony from the roof.

Ida Louise Killam's original decor used gold, blue and rose, with walnut paneling around the orchestra. The vaulted ceiling was built around a dome 50 feet across, trimmed with medallions; by the late 1980s a dropped ceiling had hidden it.

Some club-era changes were never undone. As of August 2026, the house had no permanent stage or orchestra pit, so each new show brought in a temporary stage, and some sightlines suffered. The renovation plan would add both, rework the seating, enlarge the restrooms and lobby, and put in an elevator with several stops. The lobby bar nods to the disco, and the mezzanine promenade hosts an exhibit about the show on stage.

Roundabout lists the theater as wheelchair accessible. Six wheelchair locations are in rows A and B of the orchestra, and transfer seats are offered on both levels. No elevator serves the mezzanine. Roundabout lists two single-stall accessible restrooms: one at the front of the orchestra, house right, and one in the lobby, flanked by the men's and women's rooms.

Assistive listening headsets and loops are available. A sign-interpreted series is arranged through Hands-On, and GalaPro captioning and audio description, on a borrowed device or your own phone, start several weeks after a show opens; ask audience services for dates.