Memminger Auditorium (also known as Festival Hall) is a live performance and special events venue in Charleston, South Carolina.

During the Depression, funding was tight, and building an auditorium designed by Simons & Lapham, was expected to cost $93,000.

The PWA request included money for the future Rivers School, Memminger Auditorium, and the gym at the College of Charleston.

[19] The facility was not just an auditorium, but also a gymnasium; the stage was actually a basketball court with retractable lighting when not being used for physical activities.

“In accepting the keys, Mr. [George C.] Rogers [the principal of Memminger High School] dedicated the auditorium to the young women of the city.”[21] Later that month, the building got its first use when the new student body officers were sworn in there.

[22] Despite having nearly thirty years in the spotlight as the premiere venue in Charleston, the facility became neglected after the opening of the Gailliard Center in 1968.

[25] Nothing came of the interest in the building though until the City offered $1 million toward the restoration of the auditorium as part of a proposal to move the Academic Magnet High School to the peninsula.

[29] The future of the building looked grim, but ironically, its poor condition ended up being one of the things that saved it.

The stripped out, industrial look was the perfect setting for “Surrogate Cities,” a musical composition by Heiner Goebbels, which was produced as part of Spoleto Festival USA in 2000.

Mayor Joseph P. Riley offered $500,000 toward the restoration costs, but the school district never acted on it, and the City used the money elsewhere.

The garden was dedicated to Countess Alicia Spaulding Paolozzi, the philanthropist and businesswoman who helped attract Spoleto Festival USA to Charleston.

[37] The first show in the restored building was the 2008 Spoleto production of “Amistad.”[38] Yet another instance of drama occurred on April 14, 2022, when the conservative American Heritage Association sued the city, the school district, Spoleto, and the South Carolina attorney general over the “renaming” of the building as Festival Hall.

[39] The group claimed that its traditional moniker was a tribute to Christopher Memminger, the Confederacy's Secretary of the Treasury, and that the South Carolina Heritage Act forbade “renaming” it.