Church Bldg.That Once Housed Limelight Nightclub Is For Sale

At its inception in 1852, the Gothic revival building in Chelsea housed the Church of the Holy Communion, but from the early 1980s until the late 1990s it was the Limelight, a nightclub that was at the epicenter of the city’s party scene, famed for drugs, dancing, and debauchery.

Among its outer occupants since it stopped being a house of worship: a not for profit research center, a rehab center run by Odyssey House, an upscale gym run by David Barton, a boutique marketplace and more recently a dim sum restaurant and a pizza parlor. The main part of the church that in its Limelight heyday housed a four story high dance floor, has been vacant for several years.

Local residents in recent days noticed a huge sign flapping in the summer breeze: The building was for sale, or lease, once again.

The banner simply says: “For Sale or Lease/Call 646-214-0251.” There is no realtor listed and no listing could be found online so for the moment the huge banner and street-level sign may be its only advertisement. We called but had not heard back by press time.

The real estate website ny.curbed.com in a 2016 article said it went from “a house of worship to a house of sin.”

One short-term owner in its past, Odyssey House, the drug and rehabilitation center, sealed the building’s reputation forever when it sold it in 1983 to nightclub impresario Peter Gatien, dubbed the “Party King” by the tabloid press of its day.

“We would have preferred to sell to a church,” Ben Walker, then Odyssey House executive director, told The New York Times in 1983. “But we had to go with the highest bidder. It was that or go bankrupt.”

Its heyday as a nightclub attracted cutting-edge rockers including Cyndi Lauper, Marilyn Mason, Guns N’ Roses, 50 Cent, Ozzy Osbourne, Blondie’s Debbie Harry, and RuPaul, as well as celebrities such as actress Ali McGraw.

Its avant-garde rep was established on Day 1 when pop artist and Interview magazine founder Andy Warhol tossed an opening-night party there in November 1983, which showcased the $5 million in renovation that Gatien had pumped in. The buzz soon had it displacing Studio 54 as party central for everyone from rockers and drag queens to suburban party kids. But the pulsating nightlife also attracted mobsters and street-drug dealers, which then attracted city and police attention.

Gatien, an eyepatch-wearing Canadian who had already run Limelights in Miami and Atlanta, added to his pop-culture buzz by serving as executive producer of the 1992 movie A Bronx Tale, starring Robert De Niro. Gatien had initially produced the one-act play starring Chazz Palminteri that inspired the movie. But the bad vibes that would be his undoing were mounting.

Frank Owen, author of the 2004 bestseller Clubland: The Fabulous Rise and Murderous Fall of Club Culture, recalled in a 2016 interview with ny.curbed.com: “I remember being on the balcony with Peter Gatien and saying, ‘This cannot go on anymore, this is going to end really badly.’ This was a place where drag queens were shoving Christmas lights up their butt, people were having sex all over the place, it was like the last days of the Roman Empire.”

Its notoriety captured tabloid headlines in 1996 when Michael Alig, a club kid who frequently visited Limelight and even reportedly did some work with Gatien, was accused with Robert Riggs of murdering and dismembering Angel Melendez, a small-time drug dealer who was working the club scene.

That infamy quickly attracted the attention of Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who ran on a platform of cleaning up the city. In 1998, Gatien was arrested and accused of drug trafficking and other serious crimes. The then US attorney Eric Friedberg called the Limelight “a drug supermarket.”

Gatien beat the most serious charges but pleaded guilty to tax evasion and was forced to pay $1.4 million in back taxes and fines and well as spend 60 days in jail. Eventually, as a convicted felon, he was ordered deported back to his native Canada.

The Limelight was over. A new owner tried to make another comeback under a new name, the Avalon, but that ended after a few years. The David Barton gym and the Limelight marketplace followed.

Currently, it houses a pizzeria and a popular dim sum restaurant, Jue Lan Club, although its main space, which once housed the infamous four-story-high dance floor, has been vacant for several years.

Back in 1852, it was considered a masterpiece by famed architect Richard Upjohn, who also designed Trinity Church on Wall Street and Madison Square Presbyterian Church.

At one point, when Chelsea was largely residential, the church had a thriving congregation, but by the 1960s the neighborhood changed as many of the families left for the suburbs. The congregation dwindled and eventually in 1979, the church closed and the parish was merged with another Episcopalian parish, St. George on the East Side.

The building has survived intact through the decades because the city designated the church a landmark in 1966. Initially, the Episcopal parish had envisioned high-minded uses for its deconsecrated but landmarked building and turned it over to the Lindisfarne Association, a research collective of artists, scientists, and scholars. But even though the not-for-profit association had an attractive 99-year lease for only $1 a year and managed to attract to name-brand lecturers to give talks, upkeep of the aging structure proved too expensive. The foundation gave the church back after only two years.

“Even before its 1980s heyday, the spot has been plagued by problems (financial, social, and otherwise) that have been the downfall of many a company trying to establish itself in the historic space,” culture and food reporter Priya Krishna wrote in the November 2016 ny.curbed profile. “But looked at another way, the building is a time capsule. In its long history, you can follow the rise of the rave, the rehabilitation of the city, the popularity of the boutique fitness craze, and the trend toward atmosphere-centric dining.”