After Midnight: Analyzing Legacy Business Programs' Potential to Capture Patron Perspectives Through a Case Study of Four Charleston, SC Nightlife Spaces

Within historic preservation, Legacy Business Programs (LBPs) are increasingly popular initiatives to support and celebrate businesses that have contributed to the history and culture of their communities and reached a certain operational age. LBPs are important to their communities and are part of a growing trend towards vernacular study and democratization within the preservation field. In particular, LBP application processes have the potential to document significant aspects of these important community businesses. Different LBP application questions can capture different types of business information from a range of perspectives. Within the movement towards greater inclusivity in historic preservation, understanding and documenting the aspects that patrons notice, interact with, and highlight about well-loved community businesses are important components of acknowledging and preserving the significance of these spaces. This research seeks to understand if the questions used in LBP applications are capable of capturing business attributes that patrons identify as important when publicly sharing their experiences. To achieve this goal, this thesis uses case studies of four Legacy Nightlife Businesses in Charleston, SC. Using common themes pulled from online reviews of the four businesses, this thesis compares these themes to the application questions used by LBPs across the country to establish a business’s legacy status. This comparison provides insight into the degree to which LBPs can capture the specific aspects of a business that are important to patrons. This research finds that one-third of the LBP questions analyzed do not capture any patron themes. Rather, many LBP application questions solicit information from a business owner perspective. This thesis provides insight into the LBPs and application questions that are effective at capturing patron perspectives, as well as the types of patron-identified business characteristics that are most captured by LBPs today. This thesis also makes recommendations for crafting LBP application questions that are more able to capture patron-identified business characteristics with the goal of centering community perspectives and supporting the movement towards a more democratic and inclusive preservation field.