Imagine that final beach scene in Planet of the Apes, but substitute every small patch of sand for a chain restaurant and that’ll give you an idea of where the NY restaurant scene might be heading – all blown up, with Charlton Heston eventually smashing his fists into a huge pile of thermal cardboard coffee cup sleeves instead of foamy surf.
Just a few weeks after Heston’s 2nd birthday in 1926, the very first White Tower restaurant opened in Milwaukee. Long vanished competitor to the still-standing White Castle chain, the White Tower franchise went national in the late 20’s, opening its first New York location in 1930. The city later was home to a few dozen of the restaurant’s branches, which not only served diminutive 5-cent hamburgers, but everything from fried eggs to spiced ham. Desserts included 10-cent pie, jelly rolls, marble cake, and fruit cocktail. It may have been a chain, but White Tower was a different kind of place. Most locations varied slightly in appearance from one another but the legend is that they were all clean and well-lit, some resembling open-all-night art deco spaceships. In the 1930’s, waitresses (or Towerettes) wore uniforms modeled on nurse’s garb.
Last fall we went in search of White Tower ruins. Considering the enormity of the five boroughs and the number of original restaurants, it seemed as though the odds were stacked (like sliders) in our favor. Adam Kuban of A Hamburger Today kindly pointed us to page 116 of the recently reprinted White Towers, by Paul Hirshorn and Steve Izenour. The book depicts White Tower buildings from all over the country, taken from 1926 to 1972; only one New York location is explicitly labeled with an address.
We didn’t find it. It doesn't exist, probably like all of the other New York locations depicted all ghost-like in the book, with empty counter stools and sort of beautiful glass cases of pastries. 1140 St. Nicolas Avenue, whatever it is now, does not sell hamburgers. Following a close inspection, we determined that a different White Tower restaurant (above, from 1933), stood at either 226 or 228 2nd Avenue and was next door to a bridal shop. Although the White Tower seen above was actually attached to the building behind it- the crenellated tower was built out to give the appearance of a freestanding structure- what stands there today bears more than a suspicious resemblance to a fast food castle.
On the corner of 14th and 2nd Avenue is Opti-Tech, an optometrist’s office adjunct to the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary. With an odd architectural equivalence to something like genetic memory, Opti-Tech seems to celebrate its vague tower, roughly the same size as the one from the old White Tower building. It turns out their business card is even printed on special stock cut into a tower shape. There’s no way they're the same building, but there’s something of a compelling family resemblance going on here. We asked an optometrist if she knew what the joint was before it was an eyeglass showroom. When she said “a hamburger place,” an older woman being fitted with frames (we liked the tortoise shell, by the way) got excited. “That’s right,” she said. “My friend used to tell me they had the best burgers here. Small, but good. The best burgers.” True story.
White Towers; MIT Press, 216 pp. $24.95
Photo: Detail from White Tower #11, 1933, from White Towers
