City Hall Discotheque

On the other end of the line was his cousin Guillermo Fernández, who had come to Venezuela in 1975 at the invitation of him and his brother Francisco to work at Reflections, the Plaza Venezuela discotheque —which has its own entry in this collection—, and who was then at the private club Seasons. “Here they play a lot of slow numbers, a lot of salsa, a lot of disco, all of it mixed,” Juan told him; “and over there it is all disco, rock, music all night long. I want to change that.” With the architect already hired, they set about finding out one single thing: who had done the sound for Studio 54.

• · Location: C.C.C.T., Caracas, Venezuela.
• · Opening: 1979.
• · Predominant genres: disco, funk, pop and radio hits.

Design, atmosphere and sound

City Hall stood out for its high-power sound system conceived by the American designer Richard Long, the same engineer behind the systems of Studio 54 and Paradise Garage in New York. For its time, the City Hall installation was considered one of the most advanced in the region and had what would be remembered as the largest sound console in Latin America at that moment. The combination of modern design, profuse lighting and painstakingly worked acoustics set the pace among Caracas discotheques.

They got hold of the name and located him in New York. Long traveled to Caracas to see the works under construction and presented his quote: 180,000 dollars, when a normal discotheque of the time cost between ten and twenty-five thousand. “The sound goes according to the space,” Guillermo Fernández sums up; and here they were talking about twelve hundred people.

Long worked with equipment of his own that brought together the best of every brand, and adapted the system to the architecture of each room. Everything was imported, including the special wood of the speaker cabinets, brought from Russia; the carpenter had to be brought over as well to build the bass bins in Caracas. The installation took him fifteen to twenty days. And it did not end there: he came back to Caracas every three or four months, with his instruments, to equalize the system from nine in the morning until eight at night, two days running, with his expenses paid by the house.

The human portrait comes from the partner himself: “a gentleman with glasses, thin, very quiet, very introverted. You wanted to strike up a conversation with him about sound and he gave you no clues, he gave you no explanations about anything. He installed everything beautifully and told you: there is the equipment, and nothing more.”

Long's hallmark was the bass: he designed and built a bass bin of its own kind, the Bertha —a folded hyperbolic-horn cabinet with two 18-inch Eminence woofers—, to which he added an extension called the Levan Horn so that the lowest frequencies would be felt with the body before the eardrum, as well as his Waldorf and Ultima systems for mids and lows. In essence, the same equipment —electronics and loudspeakers— that sounded at the Paradise Garage and at Studio 54 was what was installed at the City Hall.

The lighting also came from New York: a rig was contracted to synchronize the light changes with the music, and the technician John Nathan traveled to Caracas to install it. All told, putting up the City Hall cost 1,800,000 dollars of the late seventies.

How the sound was rigged

The founding discjockey (now DJ), Francisco “Paco” Lorenzo, describes the deployment from his post: four towers of about two meters spread around the dance floor. On each side of the display there was a tower a meter and a half high that was all sub-bass, and on top of it another tower with the bass; opposite, another two towers of two meters, this time without sub-bass. Hanging, two tweeters.

In the booth he worked with three Technics 1500 turntables and a Bozak mixer, with which he could go to the crossover and take out all the bass or all the sub-bass at will. Beside him, a lighting technician operated the lights live.

From the night of the test, two days before opening, one image stayed with him: “my hair stood on end, from how impressive it was, from the clarity of the sound. It was so perfect that it invited you to get out of your chair and start dancing.” Guillermo Fernández says it in the same words anyone who was there would use: “the sound of the City Hall was something that I do not think will ever happen again.”

14,000 bulbs: the end of the dark venue

Before the City Hall, walking into a discotheque in Caracas meant walking into the dark: a waiter with a flashlight led you to a sofa where two people fitted only by a miracle, and the venue existed above all to create intimacy. City Hall inverted that logic. It opened with fourteen thousand bulbs, completely bright and open, and there everyone could be seen.

The effect on the way people dressed was immediate: the ladies arrived in the most expensive gowns, and some changed their clothes on arrival. “It was a place to see and to be seen,” Fernández sums up. “City Hall changed nightlife in Venezuela: from the dark place where nobody could be seen, to one that was super open and super bright.”

Music and programming

The booth was the heart of the club. The programming brought together international hits and the best of the local sound, with themed nights, premieres and long sets in the hands of resident discjockeys. At its opening, City Hall welcomed figures of world stature, notably the performance of Gloria Gaynor as special guest.

Opening night had a guest who explains where it all came from: Larry Levan, the resident discjockey of the Paradise Garage in New York, traveled to Caracas and stayed four days. “It was him and me; the two of us opened the venue,” Paco Lorenzo recalls. The track it opened with was “I Will Survive”, by Gloria Gaynor — who shortly afterwards would perform there as the house's first artist.

Afterwards came Viola Wills, Tina Turner, Richard Clayderman, Raffaella Carrà and La Polaca, among many others; and the archive photographs add Willie Colón on the club's stage. For the shows a separate sound system was always brought in: Richard Long's system was made exclusively for spinning records. When at the Tina Turner performance they wanted to use it for the show, it did not work.

Crowd, status and influence

City Hall was an exclusive space that symbolized the social and economic boom of the era. Its members and its guests consolidated a status associated with success and with the high-end nightlife lifestyle. More than a club, it became a cultural landmark that defined trends in fashion, music and entertainment for a Caracas generation.

The figures give the measure: queues of two thousand people at the door and days on which two hundred membership cards were sold, because the venue was private. And one fixed annual date: after each Miss Venezuela, the queens' cocktail party was held there. Maritza Sayalero and Irene Sáez, among others, came to celebrate on that dance floor.

Testimonies

Among the voices that give an account of its history, Guillermo Fernández (partner-owner) and Francisco “Paco” Lorenzo (founding and resident discjockey) stand out, describing at first hand the impact of the project, the technical vision and City Hall's role as the epicenter of the capital's night.

From them comes too the closing of the technical circle: Richard Long died years later, and when Carlos Almenar built the Club New York New York —which has its own entry in this collection— the designer was no longer there. “He put in another kind of sound, very powerful,” Fernández recalls, “but I do not know whether it had the true clarity this one had.” What did remain was the mark: “from then on, everyone in Caracas started wanting to do the same.”

Transformations through time

With the passing of the years, the space evolved, adapting to the new trends. During the 80s, City Hall changed its name and its concept, coming to be called Winners. Although it kept part of the original spirit, the musical scene and the crowd had already changed. In the 90s, the place was transformed again under the names Palladium and, briefly, Pal's, without reaching the success and the mystique that characterized the original era.

Today, the old City Hall space houses the Salón de Banquetes Galés and the Salón Windsor, silent witnesses of a glorious past that set the pulse of Caracas nightlife for more than a decade.

The legacy

The name City Hall remains a synonym for fun, glamour and memorable nights. Marking an era in the nightlife of Caracas, its imprint stays alive in the memory of those who frequented it and in the history of discotheques in Venezuela.

Timeline

• · 1979 — Opening at the C.C.C.T. with Gloria Gaynor as special guest.
• · Start of the 80s — Consolidation of the musical and visual identity; peak of the programming.
• · Mid-80s — Reopening as Winners.
• · Transition into the 90s — Reopening as Palladium and Pal's.

Credits and sources

• · Testimonies of Guillermo Fernández (partner-owner) and Francisco “Paco” Lorenzo (founding and resident discjockey).
• · Audiovisual material courtesy of La Historia del Refuerzo Sonoro en Venezuela (@lahistoriadelrefuerzosonor1061), on its YouTube channel. The documentary “Capítulo City Hall y su sistema de sonido” —the source of the testimonies gathered in this article— and its transcription were contributed to the CMTK Archive, and from it come the figures (180,000 dollars for the system, 1,800,000 for the venue, 1,400 m², a capacity of 1,200, 14,000 bulbs, 200 membership cards in a day), the names (Juan and Francisco Fernández, John Nathan, Larry Levan) and the quoted passages of this article.
• · Technical data of Richard Long's systems (Bertha bass bin with two 18-inch Eminence woofers, Levan Horn extension, Waldorf and Ultima systems) and their installation at Paradise Garage and Studio 54: narration of the same documentary.
• · Archive photographs of the club contributed to the CMTK Archive: the entrance beneath the dome of bulbs, the main room, Paco Lorenzo in the booth, Maritza Sayalero after the Miss Venezuela and Willie Colón on the stage.
• · Migrated from the original article at culturaminiteka.com/discotecas-legendarias/city-hall-discotheque (accessed July 9, 2026).