Early history In the
United States,
New York increasingly became the national capital for tourism and entertainment. Grand hotels were built for upscale visitors.
New York's theater district gradually moved northward during this half century, from The
Bowery up
Broadway through
Union Square and
Madison Square, settling around
Times Square at the end of the 19th century. Stars such as
Edwin Booth and
Lillian Russell were among the early
Broadway performers.
Prostitutes served a wide variety of clientele, from sailors on leave to playboys. The first nightclubs appeared in New York City in the 1840s and 1850s, including McGlory's, and the Haymarket. They enjoyed a national reputation for
vaudeville, live music, and dance. They tolerated unlicensed liquor, commercial sex, and
gambling cards, chiefly
Faro. Practically all gambling was illegal in the city (except upscale
horseracing tracks), and regular payoffs to political and police leadership was necessary. Prices were high and they were patronized by an upscale audience.
Timothy Gilfoyle called them "the first nightclubs". By contrast,
Owney Geoghegan ran the toughest nightclub in New York from 1880 to 1883. It catered to a downscale clientele and besides the usual illegal liquor, gambling, and prostitution, it featured nightly fistfights and occasional shootings, stabbings, and police raids.
Webster Hall is credited as the first modern nightclub, being built in 1886 and starting off as a "social hall", originally functioning as a home for dance and political activism events.
Reisenweber's Cafe is credited for introducing
jazz and
cabaret to New Yorkers.
Jukebox and prohibition The
jukebox (a coin-operated record-player) was invented by the Pacific Phonograph Company in 1889 by its managers Louis Glass and his partner William S. Arnold. The first was installed at the Palais Royale Saloon,
San Francisco on November 23, 1889, becoming an overnight sensation. The advent of the jukebox fueled the
Prohibition-era boom in underground illegal
speakeasy bars, which needed music but could not afford a live band and needed precious space for paying customers. Webster Hall stayed open, with rumors circulating of
Al Capone's involvement and police bribery. From about 1900 to 1920,
working class Americans would gather at
honky tonks or
juke joints to dance to music played on a piano or a jukebox. With the
repeal of Prohibition in February 1933, nightclubs were revived, such as New York's
21 Club,
Copacabana,
El Morocco, and the
Stork Club. These nightclubs featured
big bands. During America's Prohibition, new speakeasies and nightclubs appeared on a weekly basis.
Texas Guinan opened and ran many, and had many padlocked by the police.
Harlem had its own clubs including the
Cotton Club. Midtown New York had a string of nightclubs, many named after bandleaders such as
Paul Whiteman,
Vincent Lopez, and
Roger Wolfe Kahn who opened Le Perroquet de Paris at a cost of $250,000. It was billed as America's most beautiful and sophisticated nightclub and featured the young Kahn and his band most evenings.
Pre-WWII Europe ", via organisations such as the
Kit Kat Club (which took its name from the political
Kit-Cat Club in
Pall Mall, London) and the
Café de Paris. The
43 Club on
Gerrard Street was run by
Kate Meyrick the 'Night Club Queen'. Meyrick ran several London nightclubs in the 1920s and early 1930s, during which time she served prison sentences for breaching licensing laws and bribing a police officer. In this era, nightclubbing was generally the preserve of those with money. In Paris,
Josephine Baker ran several nightclubs during the 1920s including Chez Josephine, as did her friend
Bricktop who ran Bricktops. Jazz singer and Broadway star
Adelaide Hall and her husband Bert Hicks opened the nightclub
La Grosse Pomme on Rue Pigalle in
Montmartre on December 9, 1937. Hall and Hicks also owned the chic Florida Club in London's Mayfair. In Germany during the
Golden Twenties, there was a need to dance away the memories of the
First World War. In Berlin, where a "
tango fever" had already swept dancing establishments in the early 1910s, 899 venues with a dancing licence were registered by 1930, including the
Moka Efti,
Casanova,
Scala,
Delphi-Palast (destroyed in WW2, replaced by the
Delphi Filmpalast),
Kakadu,
Femina-Palast,
Palais am Zoo,
Gourmenia-Palast,
Uhlandeck, and the
Haus Vaterland. In the 1920s, the
nightlife of the city was dominated by
party drugs such as
cocaine.
Asia In 1930s
Shanghai, the big clubs were
The Paramount Club (opened in 1933) and
Ciro's (opened in 1936). Other clubs of the era were the Metropole and the
Canidrome.
Jazz bands, big bands, and singers performed for a bowtied clientele. The Paramount and Ciro's in particular were fiercely rivalrous and attracted many customers from the underworld. Shanghai's clubs fell into decline after the
Japanese invasion of 1937 and eventually closed. The Paramount reopened after the
communist victory in 1949 as
The Red Capitol Cinema, dedicated to
Maoist propaganda films, before fading into obscurity. It reopened as The Paramount in 2008.
World War II years In
occupied France,
jazz and
bebop music, and the
jitterbug dance were banned by the
Nazis as "decadent American influences", so as an act of resistance, people met at hidden basements called
discothèques where they danced to jazz and
swing music, played on a single turntable when a jukebox was not available. These discothèques were also patronized by anti-
Vichy youth called
zazous. In
Nazi Germany, there were underground discothèques patronized by
anti-Nazi youth called the "
Swing Kids".
Post-WWII: Emergence of the disc jockey and discothèque The end of World War II saw the beginning of a transformation in the nightclub: no longer the preserve of a moneyed elite, over several decades, the nightclub steadily became a mass phenomenon. In Germany, the first discothèque on record that involved a
disc jockey was
Scotch-Club, which opened in 1959. Its, and therefore the world's first DJ was 19-year-old local cub reporter Klaus Quirini who had been sent to write a story about the strange new phenomenon of public record-playing; fueled by
whisky, he jumped on stage and started announcing records as he played them and took the stage-name DJ Heinrich. In the US,
Connie's Inn and the
Cotton Club in
Harlem, NY were popular venues for white audiences. Before 1953 and some years thereafter, most bars and nightclubs used a jukebox or mostly live bands. In Paris, at a club named
Le Whisky à Gogo, founded in 1947 on the
rue de Seine by Paul Pacine,
Régine Zylberberg in 1953 laid down a dance floor, suspended coloured lights, and replaced the jukebox with two turntables that she operated herself so there would be no breaks between the music. This was the world's first-ever "discothèque". The Whisky à Gogo set into place the standard elements of the modern post-World War II
discothèque-style nightclub. In London, by the end of the 1950s, several of the
coffee bars in London's Soho introduced afternoon dancing. These prototype discothèques were nothing like modern-day nightclubs, as they were unlicensed, daytime venues where coffee was the drink of choice and that catered to a very young public – mostly made up of French and Italians working illegally, mostly in catering, to learn English, as well as
au pair girls from most of western Europe. A well known venue was
Les Enfants Terribles at 93 Dean St., in
Soho, London. Initially opening as a coffee-bar, it was run by Betty Passes who claimed to be the inventor of
disco after she pioneered the idea of dancing to records at her premises' basement in 1957. It stayed popular into the 1960s. It later became a 1940s-themed club called the Black Gardenia but has since closed.
The Flamingo Club on
Wardour Street in London ran between 1952 and 1967 and was known for its role in the growth of
rhythm and blues and jazz in the UK. It earned a controversial reputation with gangsters and prostitutes said to have been frequent visitors in the 1960s, along with musicians such as
the Beatles.
1960s Discothèques began to appear in New York City in 1964: the
Village Vanguard offered dancing between jazz sets; Shepheard's, located in the basement of the
Drake Hotel, was small but popular; L'Interdit and Il Mio (at
Delmonico's) were private; the
El Morocco had an on-premises disco called Garrison; and the
Stork Club had one in its Shermaine suite. Larger discos opened in 1966: Cheetah, with room for 2000 dancers, the
Electric Circus, and Dom. While the discothèque swept Europe throughout the 1960s, it did not become widely popular in the United States until the 1970s, In Germany in the 1960s, when Berlin was divided by the
Wall,
Munich became Germany's epicenter of nightlife for the next two decades with numerous nightclubs and discothèques such as
Big Apple,
PN hit-house,
Tiffany,
Domicile,
Hot Club,
Piper Club,
Why Not,
Crash,
Sugar Shack, the underwater discothèque
Yellow Submarine, and
Mrs. Henderson, where stars such as
Mick Jagger,
Keith Richards,
Freddie Mercury, and
David Bowie went in and out and which led to artists such as
Giorgio Moroder,
Donna Summer, and Mercury settling in the city. In 1967, Germany's first large-scale discothèque opened in Munich as the club
Blow Up, which because of its extravagance and excesses quickly gained international reputation. (at the Blarney Club, 31
Tottenham Court Road, London from 23 Dec 1966 to Oct 1967) which then became the
Middle Earth club (at 43 King Street) and eventually the
Roundhouse in 1968. Both the UFO Club and Middle Earth were short-lived but saw performances by artists such as house-band
Pink Floyd,
Soft Machine,
Procol Harum,
Fairport Convention,
Arthur Brown, and
Jimi Hendrix; DJ
John Peel was a regular. These clubs germinated what would later become the underground gig scene of the 1970s and 1980s, at venues such as the
100 Club and
The Clarendon in Hammersmith. During the 1960s, the Clarendon was a
country & western club, having earlier been an upmarket jazz,
dining, and dancing club in the pre-War era. In the north of England, the distinct
northern soul movement spanned
Manchester's
Twisted Wheel Club, the
Blackpool Mecca,
Cleethorpes Pier, and the
Wigan Casino, known for the
acrobatic dancing of its clubgoers; each of these clubs was known for all-nighters.
1970s: Disco Disco has its roots in the underground club scene. During the early 1970s in New York City, disco clubs were places where oppressed or
marginalized groups such as gay people,
African Americans,
Latinos,
Italian Americans, and
Jews could party without following male to female dance protocol or exclusive club policies. Discothèques had a law where for every three men, there was one woman. The women often sought these experiences to seek safety in a venue that embraced the
independent woman – with an eye to one or more of the same or opposite sex or none. Although the culture that surrounded disco was progressive in dance couples,
cross-genre music, and a push to put the physical over the rational, the role of women looked to be placed in the role of safety net. It brought together people from different backgrounds. These clubs acted as safe havens for
homosexual partygoers to dance in peace and away from public scrutiny. By the late 1970s, many major U.S. cities had thriving disco club scenes centered on discothèques, nightclubs, and private loft parties where DJs would play disco hits through powerful
PA systems for the dancers. The DJs played "a smooth mix of long single records to keep people 'dancing all night long. Some of the most prestigious clubs had elaborate lighting systems that throbbed to the beat of the music. The genre of disco has changed through the years. It is classified both as a musical genre and as a nightclub; and in the late seventies, disco began to act as a safe haven for social outcasts. This club culture that originated in downtown New York, was attended by a variety of different ethnicities and economic backgrounds. It was an inexpensive activity to indulge in, and discos united a multitude of different minorities in a way never seen before; including those in the gay and
psychedelic communities. The music ultimately was what brought people together. Some cities had disco dance instructors or
dance schools that taught people how to do popular disco dances such as "touch dancing", the "
hustle", and the "
cha-cha-cha". There were also disco fashions that discotheque-goers wore for nights out at their local disco, such as sheer, flowing
Halston dresses for women and shiny polyester
Qiana shirts for men. Disco clubs and "hedonistic loft parties" had a club culture with many Italian American, African American, gay, and Hispanic people. In addition to the dance and fashion aspects of the disco club scene, there was also a thriving
drug subculture, particularly for
recreational drugs that would enhance the experience of dancing to the loud music and the flashing lights, such as
cocaine (nicknamed "blow"),
amyl nitrite "
poppers", and the "other quintessential 1970s club drug
Quaalude, which suspended motor coordination and turned one's arms and legs to
Jell-O". The "massive quantities of drugs ingested in discotheques by newly liberated gay men produced the next cultural phenomenon of the disco era: rampant
promiscuity and
public sex. While the dance floor was the central arena of seduction, actual sex usually took place in the nether regions of the disco: bathroom stalls, exit stairwells, and so on. In other cases, the disco became a kind of "main course" in a
hedonist's menu for a night out." Studio 54 was notorious for the hedonism that went on within; the balconies were known for sexual encounters, and drug use was rampant. Its dance floor was decorated with an image of the "
Man in the Moon" that included an animated
cocaine spoon. Other 1970s discothèques in New York City were Manhattan's Starship Discovery One at 350 West
42nd Street,
Roseland Ballroom,
Xenon,
The Loft, the
Paradise Garage, a recently renovated
Copacabana, and Aux Puces, one of the first gay disco bars. The album cover of Saturday Night Band's
Come On and Dance, Dance featured two dancers in the Starship Discovery One. In San Francisco, there was the
Trocadero Transfer, the
I-Beam, and the
End Up. In Spain during the 1970s, the first clubs and discos opened in
Ibiza, an island which had been a popular destination for hippie travelers since the 1960s and now was experiencing a tourist boom. The first ever "
Superclub" in Ibiza was the now-abandoned "Festival Club" at
Sant Josep de sa Talaia, which was built between 1969 and 1972 and serviced tourists who were bused in until it closed in 1974. Responding to this influx of visitors, locals opened the first large clubs
Pacha,
Amnesia, and the
Ku-club (renamed Privilege in 1995). By the early 1980s, the term "disco" had largely fallen out of favour in the
United States.
1970s: Disco, hip hop, punk rock, and glam foundations Nightclub culture was often pioneered by
African American and
Latino communities in the United States. In the 1970s and 80s, Black DJs created the blueprint for the modern dance floor.
Chicago house, born in venues like
The Warehouse with
Frankie Knuckles, and
Detroit techno, pioneered by the "Belleville Three" (
Juan Atkins,
Kevin Saunderson, and
Derrick May), turned the DJ into a cultural icon and established the "non-stop beat" format used globally today. In parallel to the disco scene and quite separate from it, the
glam rock (
T. Rex, David Bowie,
Roxy Music) and
punk rock cultures in London produced their own set of nightclubs, starting with
Billy's at 69
Dean Street in Soho (known for its David Bowie nights), Louise's on
Poland Street (the first true punk club and hangout of the
Sex Pistols,
Siouxsie Sioux plus the
Bromley Contingent, and then Blitz (the home of the
Blitz Kids).
Crackers was a key part of the jazz-
funk scene and also the early punk scene via its Vortex nights. The underground warehouse party scene was kicked off by
Toyah Willcox with her
Mayhem Studios at
Patcham Terrace in
Battersea. The emergence of this highly experimental artistic scene in London can be credited almost entirely to
Rusty Egan,
Steve Strange, the Bromley Contingent's
Philip Sallon, and Chris Sullivan. The
new wave music scene grew out of Blitz and the
Cha Cha Club in
Charing Cross. Whilst overall, the club scene was fairly small and hidden away in basements, cellars, and warehouses, London's complicated mix of punk,
New Romantic, New Wave, and gay clubs in the late 1970s and early 1980s paved the way for
acid house to flourish in the late 1980s, initially with
Shoom and two acid house nights at
Heaven: Spectrum and Rage. On 3 July 1980, at Gossip's on Dean Street, Soho, Gaz Mayall, son of
John Mayall, began ''Gaz's Rockin' Blues'', later at Billy's Club, now the longest running
club night (one-nighter), an independent promotion event series, in London, still going . In the north of England, what later became the "alternative" scene was centered around the Roxy/Bowie room at Pips in Manchester, which opened in 1972; as small as this scene was, many notable figures attended the club, and Joy Division played their first gig there, billed as "Warsaw" before changing their name that night. at 69 Dean Street, in the basement below the ground floor
Gargoyle Club. Both music and fashion embraced the aesthetics of the movement. Bands included
Depeche Mode,
Yazoo,
The Human League,
Duran Duran,
Eurythmics, and
Ultravox.
Reggae-influenced bands included
Boy George and
Culture Club, and
electronic vibe bands included
Visage. At London nightclubs, young men would often wear make-up and young women would wear men's suits.
Leigh Bowery's
Taboo (which opened in 1985) bridged the New Romantic and acid house scenes. With the birth of
house music in the mid-1980s and then acid house, kickstarted by Chris Sullivan's
The Wag Club (on the site of the earlier
The Flamingo Club), a cultural revolution swept around the world; first in
Chicago at the
Warehouse and then London and New York City. London clubs such as
Clink Street, Revolution in Progress (RiP), Philip Sallon's
The Mudd Club,
Danny Rampling's
Shoom (starting in December 1987 in the basement of Southwark's Fitness Centre),
Paul Oakenfold's
Spectrum, and
Nicky Holloway's
The Trip fused the eclecticism and ethos of [Ibiza with the new electronic music from the US. The largest
UK cities like
Birmingham,
Leeds (The Orbit),
Liverpool (
Quadrant Park and 051), Manchester (
The Haçienda),
Newcastle, and
Swansea, and several key European places like Paris (
Les Bains-Douches), Ibiza (
Pacha), and
Rimini, also played a significant role in the evolution of
clubbing, DJ culture, and nightlife. Significant New York nightclubs of the period were
Area,
Danceteria, and
The Limelight. However, the seismic shift in nightlife was the emergence of
rave culture in the UK. A mixture of free and commercial outdoor parties were held in fields, warehouses, and abandoned buildings, by various groups such as Biology, Sunrise, Confusion, Hedonism, Rage & Energy, and many others. This laid the ground for what was unfold in the 1990s, initially in the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States and then worldwide from the 2000s onwards.
1990s, 2000s, and 2010s players for mixing music (
Munich, 2010s) In Europe and North America, nightclubs play disco-influenced dance music such as
house music,
techno,
Eurodance and other dance music styles such as
electronica,
breakbeat, and
trance. Most nightclubs in major cities in the U.S. that have an
early adulthood clientele, play
hip hop,
dance-pop, house, and/or trance music. These clubs are generally the largest and most frequented of all of the different types of clubs. Techno clubs are popular around the world since the early 1990s. Well known examples of the 1990s include
Tresor,
E-Werk, and
Bunker in
Berlin; Omen and
Dorian Gray in
Frankfurt;
Ultraschall, , and
Natraj Temple in Munich; and Stammheim in
Kassel. The
Castlemorton Common Festival in 1992 triggered the UK government's
Criminal Justice Act, which largely ended the rave movement by criminalizing any gathering of 20 or more people where music ("sounds wholly or predominantly characterized by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats") was played. Commercial clubs immediately capitalized on the situation causing a boom in "Superclubs" in the UK, such as
Ministry of Sound (London),
Renaissance, and
Cream (
Liverpool). These developed the club-as-spectacle theme pioneered in the 1970s and 1980s by Pacha (Ibiza) and
Juliana's Tokyo (Japan), creating a global phenomenon; however, many clubs such as
The Cross in London, preserved the more underground feel of the former era. Since the late 2000s, venues that received high media attention include
Berghain in Berlin and
Fabric in London.
Video art has been used in nightclubs since the 1960s, but especially with the rise of
electronic dance music since the late 1980s.
VJing gained more and more importance. VJs ("video jockeys") mix video content in a similar manner that DJs mix audio content, creating a visual experience that is intended to complement the music. In the mid-to-late 2010s, the musical landscape of North American nightclubs underwent a significant shift. While
EDM and
Dance-pop dominated the early part of the decade, by approximately 2016,
hip hop and
trap became the primary genres in mainstream American nightlife. This era saw the rise of "club rap," where high-energy production from artists like
Drake,
Future,
Rae Sremmurd,
Kendrick Lamar, and
Migos replaced traditional house and trance in many top-tier venues. By 2018 and 2019, the "superclub" format in cities like
Las Vegas,
Miami, and
Atlanta frequently billed hip hop artists alongside or in place of resident DJs to cater to the evolving tastes of the
millennial and
Gen Z demographic.
2020s In early 2020s, the global
COVID-19 pandemic, triggered nightclubs to close worldwide – the first ever synchronized, global shutdown of nightlife. In response, online "virtual nightclubs" developed, hosted on
video-conferencing platforms such as
Zoom. As countries relaxed lockdown rules following drops in case numbers, some nightclubs reopened in repurposed form as sat-down pubs. As vaccine rollouts reached advanced stages, nightclubs were able to reopen with nil or looser restrictions, such as producing
certification of full vaccination upon entry. ==Entry criteria==