White Castle # 16

“White Castle was the first restaurant chain to popularize hamburgers. Formerly a disreputable "carnival” food in the early 20th century, hamburgers became the defacto “American” sandwich in the 1920s (and remains so today), largely due to White Castle.”

“Truitt and Fitzgerald continued to use the building as a small-scale food stand. During the next 20 years, White Castle remained a relatively small fast-food chain; newer hamburger chains such as McDonald's in the 1950s and Burger King in the 1960s began to dominate post-World War II America and expand nationwide, building on White Castle's earlier innovations.”

“White Castle was founded in Wichita, Kansas, in 1921, and its popular hamburger stands soon spread to over a dozen cities, including Chicago by 1930. The company is considered the “father” of the many fast-food chains that have transformed American eating habits and streetscapes in the twentieth century.”

“Only one White Castle, White Castle #8 in Minneapolis, has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was built from a prototype design, using porcelain-enamel steel panels, in 1936, six years after Chicago's White Castle #16, and is no longer on its original site.”

“White Castle # 16 was restored in 2010 by the current owner. The building retains excellent physical integrity, displayed through its historic location, overall design, historic materials, details and ornamentation.”

“Incidentally you will see how clean and elegant is the interior of a White Castle. Then you will continue to be a White Castle customer and that will repay us for making you this special inducement to once visit one of our many White Castles, which you will find in 16 metropolitan centers throughout the country. • U. S. Government Inspected BEEF delivered fresh twice daily is the ONLY meat used in White Castle Hamburgers.”

“The response was astonishing. White Castle operators reported that customers lined up hours ahead of the promotion start time, with lines stretching for blocks. The company later estimated that millions of newspaper coupons were redeemed during this promotion, which ran for a week.”

“White Castle is also credited with being a pioneer in the use of newspaper advertising and promotional sales in support of restaurants in general, and hamburger sales in particular.”

“The building is an early important example of early twentieth-century “programmatic” architecture-visually-distinctive buildings that served as “bricks-and-mortar” advertising for companies, often through visual cues that tied into a company's values or image, or, in some instances, even “mimicked” the actual products sold from the buildings.”

“These are buildings that, through sometimes fantastical imagery or unusual visual cues, are designed to mimic products or services being sold inside, or are otherwise meant to visually exemplify values that the building's owner wants associated with its business, goods, or services.”