Faculty Lounge Has Closed on Huger Street After Decades of Charleston Nightlife History
Faculty Lounge Has Closed on Huger Street
Another longtime piece of Charleston nightlife has come to an end.
Faculty Lounge has closed at 391 Huger Street, ending the latest chapter for a bar whose history in Charleston stretches across generations.
The venue’s current online ordering page now lists every day of the week as closed. As of this writing, What’s Going On In Charleston has not located a public announcement detailing why the bar closed or what may eventually replace it.
For people who only discovered Faculty Lounge during the past decade, however, the history behind that little building may be surprising.
Faculty Lounge Was Around Long Before Instagram
Faculty Lounge wasn’t created during Charleston’s more recent cocktail-bar boom.
Its roots stretch back to at least the 1970s.
When Charleston City Paper profiled the venue in 2012, then-owner Joe Major said Faculty Lounge originally served as a watering hole for local African American teachers before eventually becoming one of Charleston’s popular nightclubs.
The venue later operated as a key club frequented by members of Charleston’s Black community.
That history also helps explain the name.
Long before many current Charleston residents were ringing the bell to get through Faculty Lounge’s understated entrance, generations of locals had already been gathering there.
A New Generation Rediscovered Faculty Lounge
By 2012, Faculty Lounge was entering another era.
Major, who lived nearby and had become a regular, took over the space and revived it as a private club. Charleston City Paper described it at the time as one of the city’s increasingly buzzed-about bars.
The formula remained intentionally different from Charleston’s increasingly polished nightlife scene.
Faculty Lounge wasn’t trying to become a glamorous King Street mega-bar.
It was supposed to feel like your neighborhood spot.
Then came another transition.
After a temporary hiatus, the bar underwent a substantial remodel and reopened again in October 2014.
Architect and woodworker Erik Hutson told Charleston City Paper at the time that the goal was to preserve the character of a place that had long served as a neighborhood gathering spot and an alternative to the increasingly busy Upper King Street corridor.
The Hidden Bar Charleston Regulars Knew
The remodeled Faculty Lounge eventually developed its own reputation.
There was no giant neon sign announcing the place from the street.
You found the door.
You rang the bell.
And if you knew, you knew.
Inside, Faculty Lounge became known for a combination that was increasingly difficult to categorize: part dive bar, part cocktail bar, part neighborhood lounge and part late-night dance floor.
Eater Charleston documented everything from its inexpensive happy hours and Tiki Tuesdays to its DJs and nightlife programming.
Condé Nast Traveler later described Faculty Lounge as a Charleston institution whose real strength was its ability to create community through its DJ-driven dance parties.
Even as Charleston’s nightlife scene continued changing around it, Faculty Lounge remained.
As recently as March 2025, Eater still included the Huger Street bar among its essential places to drink around Charleston, pointing to its rotating DJs, dance nights and experimental cocktail menu.
Different Generations Remember Different Faculty Lounges
That may ultimately be the most interesting thing about its closure.
Ask someone about Faculty Lounge and their answer may depend entirely on when they were outside.
Some remember the private-club years.
Others remember its roots within Charleston’s Black community.
Some remember arcade games, pool tables and cheap drinks.
Another generation remembers creative cocktails, Beyoncé nights, packed dance floors and DJs.
And newer residents may simply remember discovering an almost-hidden bar on Huger Street that felt completely different from the massive nightlife operations farther down the peninsula.
Faculty Lounge had several lives.
That is what makes this closing feel less like the loss of one individual bar and more like the end of another small chapter in Charleston nightlife history.
What Happens Next?
For now, that part remains unclear.
The location’s ordering platform currently shows the business closed throughout the week, but no publicly available announcement we could locate explains the circumstances behind the closure or identifies a future tenant for 391 Huger Street.
If additional information becomes available about Faculty Lounge or the future of the Huger Street space, What’s Going On In Charleston will update this story.
In the meantime, we want to hear from the people who actually made the place what it was.
What era of Faculty Lounge do you remember—and what’s the story you’ll always associate with that little building on Huger Street?
