Studio 54 Theatre

The Studio 54 Theatre, which originated as the Gallo Opera House, has perhaps the most unusual history of any of the current Broadway theaters. After being built in 1927, it pretty much changed its name with the weather, being dubbed the New Yorker Theatre in 1930, becoming the nightclub/restaurant the Casino de Paris in 1933, spending a brief spell as the Palladium Theatre in 1936, leased a year later by the Federal Theatre Project and called the Federal Music Theatre, and then going back to its old name the New Yorker in 1939. In the '40s, CBS began using it as a radio studio and later a television studio.

But it was in 1977, when Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager bought the old opera house-turned-TV studio, that it became the infamous nightclub Studio 54. A mecca for New York City's hottest and hippest, Studio 54 was all about sex, drugs, and disco and attracted performers like Donna Summer and Gloria Gaynor to its stage, and pretty much every other celebrity imaginable to the dance floor.

The club was shut down in 1979, but after re-opening in 1982 it attracted a whole new generation of pop stars like Madonna, Boy George, and Janet Jackson. However, the party eventually ended and the space was restored to its former legitimate glory when it opened as the Studio 54 Theatre in 1998.

Reflective of its unique history, Studio 54 has the look of a handsome, old-fashioned theater mixed with the crumbling glitz of the decadent nightclub it once was. Especially impressive is the long mirror-lined hall, bedecked with chandeliers, that leads into the actual theater.

When it re-opened in 1998 with the musical Cabaret, the Studio 54 Theatre was designed with table seating in the orchestra in order to give audience members the feeling of being in a club setting. But what the conceit provided in ambiance it lacked in comfort, and with the opening of the A Streetcar Named Desire revival, the tables were removed in favor of nice, roomy seats.