The Limelight - Stunning Photos From 1990s Favorite NYC Nightclub

New York City after dark in the ‘90s was an ecstatic fever dream fueled by club kids’ outrageous fantasies, and as house photographer for Peter Gatien’s four iconic clubs, Steve Eichner had a ringside seat for all the action. To celebrate the October 20 release of “In the Limelight: The Visual Excess of NYC Night Life in the 90s”, Eichner’s new book with Gabriel Sanchez, Patch takes you back to his old stomping grounds in a series of five articles. Our club-hop starts with the titular Limelight, Gatien’s first—and still favorite—New York club.

When Canadian-born club impresario Peter Gatien came to New York City in the early ‘80s, after running previous incarnations of the Limelight in Atlanta and Florida, the eye-patch wearing promoter hit the jackpot. His good eye spotted the ideal location for an NYC Club: a deconsecrated Gothic Revival church with ornate stained glass windows on the corner of Sixth Avenue and 20th Street in Chelsea.

Opened in late ‘83, the New York Limelight quickly emerged as a disco hotspot. But it wasn’t until the ‘90s, when the club opened Rock and Roll Church and became a mecca for A-List celebs and club-kid superstars, that the Limelight exploded as a supernova.

“I was always looking for the best party, and going to parties in a church was always the irony of Limelight,” recalls Eichner. “The club designers restored and backlit the giant stained glass windows depicting biblical scenes, so it looked like sunlight was pouring through them. They were a constant reminder that we were desecrating a holy place.”

The artists who played in Limelight’s Rock and Roll Church weren’t exactly the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, either. Eichner shot a who’s who of ‘90s stars from multiple genres: Fishbone, House of Pain, Madonna, TLC, Joe Strummer, Boy George, Tupac, Nina Cherry, and RuPaul, to name a few. Meanwhile, over in the Limelight’s Disco 2000, ravers dressed in outlandish drag dancing to throbbing beats also caught Eichner’s eye as he wandered through the club’s colliding worlds, where anything could and did happen.

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“You’d see Wall Street suits and ties next to drag queens, next to people from the Bronx, next to hip hop artists,” says Eichner. And there were plenty of places for the subgroups to mix it up, like Limelight’s notorious Shampoo Room.

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“It was a sort of above-ground pool filled with thick foam, where you jump in with your friends and swish around in there to thumping music,” recalls Eichner. “And every now and then, someone would emerge from the foam and get hosed off with an air gun. I thought it was the greatest idea ever. Imagine being drunk or high, and you discover this soap pit of joy!

I had to get in there myself once or twice.”

Eichner’s mandate from Gatien was “to capture celebrities to get publicity for the clubs by selling photos to newspapers or magazines,” a task at which he excelled. But after catching Page Six fodder like Tommy Lee and Pam Anderson canoodling in one of Limelight’s dark corners, he was free to roam around. “80% of the photos in the book are the photos that I shot for myself,” says Eichner. “Either artistically, or to document the era.”

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Eichner documented a nude photoshoot on Sixth Avenue right outside the Limelight and snapped an Adidas fashion show inside the club with Run DMC providing the music. But his favorite subjects of all were the club kids dressed to kill for a night on the town. “Limelight was the breeding ground for so much culture, and you couldn’t be part of it on your phone from your basement.” Eichner points out. “There was no social media. You had to get out. You had to be in it.”

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All photos are by Steve Eichner and can be seen featured in his new book called "In The Limelight - The Visual Ecstasy of NYC Nightlife in the 90s"

Steve Eichner is a legendary nightlife photographer. After his tenure in the clubs, he worked as a staff photographer for Women’s Wear Daily for nearly two decades. His photographs have been published in Vogue, The New York Times, Newsweek, TIME, Rolling Stone, People, Vanity Fair, Cosmo, Details and GQ.