White Castle

Story

White Castle Building Number 8 is a former White Castle restaurant building in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. It was one of the few prefabricated, portable buildings built by the chain, and is now operated as an antique/vintage goods shop.The building, measuring only 28 feet by 28 feet, has had three different locations in Minneapolis. The restaurant was originally located at 616 Washington Avenue Southeast near the University of Minnesota campus (in the Stadium Village neighborhood) in 1936. In 1950 the building was moved to 329 Central Avenue Southeast when the owner of the Washington Avenue property refused to renew the lease. In 1983 White Castle officials opened a new, larger restaurant a few blocks away from the Central Avenue location.In order to save a piece of the city's architectural history, the Minneapolis Heritage Preservation Commission found a buyer willing to relocate the structure and save it from demolition. The building is now located at 3252 Lyndale Avenue South, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.HistoryIn 1926 White Castle entered the Minneapolis area. The eighth restaurant in the Minneapolis area was built in 1927 at 616 Washington Avenue Southeast, originally with glazed brick. As the restaurant chain expanded, they developed standardized production methods and a standard look for their restaurants.Porcelain Steel Buildings, a subsidiary of White Castle, manufactured movable, prefabricated structures that could be assembled at any White Castle restaurant site. This design was built on the Washington Avenue site in 1936, replacing its 1927 building. The 1936 building is modeled after the Chicago Water Tower, with octagonal buttresses, crenellated towers, and a parapet wall. The founders later claimed that this design was the first successful use of porcelain as a building material. The success of the White Castle building method also spurred other Wichita-area entrepreneurs to manufacture portable steel buildings as well.