By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
The “Mad Men” style cocktail lounge of the Clinton Aire Hotel was transformed into the marquee spot of the Disco Era in Buffalo. Club 747 opened to much fanfare at the Executive Inn on Genesee Street across from the airport in March 1975.
The joint, it was said by one DJ, “established Buffalo as a disco city.”
Club 747 had been the Mid-Century Modern palace The Clinton-Aire Lounge.
The club entrance was a 100-foot fabricated replica of a 747, but once inside, the place was outfitted with Boeing 747 cabin equipment, stripped from 22 jets that were being converted into freight carriers. Nights were punctuated by the sounds of jets taking off.
Club 747 1978 entrance
Some weekends, 5,000 people hustled their way through the club. Patrons needed their $1 “boarding pass” to get in, and wouldn’t make it past the fuselage door if they were wearing sneakers, sweatshirts, or “non-dress jeans.”
“The Club 747 offers a cosmopolitan mélange of people, most with their prime concerns being drinking, meeting that one special person or simply watching everyone else have a good time,” wrote Stephen Monroe in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle as a second Club 747 was opening in Henrietta in 1977. “By midnight, there was little elbow room on the dance floor or elsewhere. People were talking, laughing, drinking, watching – and dancing. Outside, a line of people were wanting to get in.”
You could also experience the place from your living room. “Disco Step-By-Step” was started on cable TV by 747’s DJ Marty Angelo, and then moved to Channel 4 with Kevin O’Connell as host.
And it wasn’t just Buffalo. An NBC Dick Clark special in 1978 took viewers around the country on a tour of America’s great discos – Studio 54 in New York, Dillon’s in Los Angeles and Cheektowaga’s Club 747.
The discotheque underwent a $100,000 remodel in 1978, resulting in a larger dance floor, a more robust sound system, and a lighting scheme that was reminiscent of “Saturday Night Fever.”
Club 747 was a part of the Executive Inn complex, which also included the Playboy Club. The spot was Kixx Nightclub through the 1990s and was torn down to make way for a Courtyard by Marriott hotel in the mid-2000s.
Club 747 was a part of the Executive Inn complex– which also included the Playboy Club– on Genesee Street in Cheektowaga across the street from the airport.
Kevin O’Connell hosts Disco Step-By-Step at Club 747.
