While Studio 54 catered to celebrities and socialites, a very different scene was taking shape in a church basement on St. Marks Place. Club 57 opened at 57 St. Marks Place in the East Village, tucked beneath the Holy Cross Polish National Catholic Church. Membership cost five dollars. The floors were linoleum. The furniture came from the street. None of that mattered.
Ann Magnuson took over as manager and hostess in 1979. She moved to New York from West Virginia and ran the club like an adult playground. She organized theme nights built around humor and creativity — performing as 1950s housewives, space aliens, and everything in between. Her approach set the tone: everyone was welcome, no professional training required.
Keith Haring was a regular. He drew on the blackboards and walls, turning the basement into a living gallery long before he was an international name. Kenny Scharf helped decorate for theme nights using bright colors and kitschy 1950s objects. Jean-Michel Basquiat showed up for open-mic nights and art shows. These three artists shared ideas daily and treated a well-made costume the same as a serious painting.
The club ran events nearly every night. Monster Movie Night drew crowds every Tuesday — members dressed as monsters and shouted at old horror films projected on the wall. One night, artists built a nine-hole miniature golf course inside the basement using only trash and found objects. Each hole was its own piece of art. There were Ladies’ Wrestling nights, Elvis Presley Memorial parties, and the “Theoretical Party” — a party where nothing actually happened.
The music mixed punk, new wave, and 1960s pop. Klaus Nomi performed in a stiff plastic tuxedo with his face painted white, singing opera in a high-pitched voice while moving like a machine. John Sex arrived with towering blonde hair and backup dancers, blending lounge-singer theatrics with punk attitude. The B-52s and Lypsinka also performed on that small, close stage where the audience and the performers were essentially in the same room.
Fashion at the club was a deliberate act. Members raided thrift stores and sewed their own clothes. Women wore beehive hairdos and vintage floral dresses. Men wore bowling shirts and skinny ties. Everything was updated with punk accessories — safety pins, heavy makeup, and exaggerated styling meant to evoke cartoon characters or old sitcoms.
For the people who called Club 57 home, it was their entire social world. During the day, they worked low-paying jobs or made art in cramped apartments. At night, they came to the basement. The club was a safe space for outsiders — people who didn’t fit anywhere else in the city.
Members built sets together, cleaned up after shows, and launched new projects constantly. If something failed on a Tuesday, a new idea was already in motion by Wednesday. The club stayed active until around 1983, producing hundreds of shows and exhibitions in those few short years — all inside a simple, unadorned church basement in downtown New York.
