White Castle Reception – Celebrate 90th Birthday

Location: Capitol Building – HC5
Description: We’re bringing the crave to Congress
White Castle Reception – Celebrate 90th Birthday
Capitol Building – HC5

11:30am – 1:30pm
Start Time: 11:30
Date: 2011-06-14
End Time: 13:30

History of White Castle (from wikipedia)

White Castle was founded in 1921 in Wichita, Kansas. Cook Walter A. Anderson partnered with insurance man Edgar Waldo “Billy” Ingram to make White Castle into a chain of restaurants and market White Castle. At the time, Americans were hesitant to eat ground beef after Upton Sinclair‘s 1906 novel The Jungle had publicized the poor sanitation practices of the meat packing industry. The founders set out to change the public’s perception of the cleanliness of the industry. To invoke a feeling of cleanliness, their restaurants were small buildings with white porcelain enamel on steel exteriors, stainless steel interiors, and employees outfitted with spotless uniforms.

Their first restaurants in Wichita, Kansas, were a success, and the company branched out into other Midwestern markets, starting in 1922 with El Dorado, Kansas. White Castle Building No. 8, originally built in 1927 and remodeled (photo, right), was an example of the chain’s prefabricated porcelain buildings. The building measured 28 feet (8.5 m) by 28 feet (8.5 m) and was made to resemble the Chicago Water Tower, with octagonal buttresses, crenelated towers, and a parapet wall.

White Castle is an American regional fast food hamburger restaurant chain in the Midwestern United States, and the first of its kind in the US. It is known for its small, square hamburgers. Sometimes referred to as “sliders“, the burgers were priced at five cents until the 1940s, and remained at ten cents for years thereafter while the burgers became smaller. For several years, when the original burgers sold for five cents, White Castle periodically ran promotional ads in local newspapers which contained coupons offering five burgers for ten cents, takeout only.

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