"White
Tower" by Paul McGehee. One of the great hamburger joints of
yesteryear, the White Tower restaurant chain began in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin back in 1926 within easy walking distance of Marquette
University...and its throngs of hungry students. That first
strategically-placed White Tower restaurant being an overwhelming
success, they soon expanded to 130 locations in several cities over the
next few years. During the hard times of the Great Depression, it
became known as a place to you could go to get a good, hot hamburger
for only a nickel. The company's famous motto to promote multiple
purchases of the little hamburgers was "Buy a Bag Full"...many took
them up on it over the next few decades! In the early days of White
Tower their easily-recognizable gleaming white tile buildings, built in
Art Deco style, were meant as a visual symbol of cleanliness and purity
in an era when conditions in the meat packing industry were sometimes
of dubious hygiene. The White Tower restaurants even hired young ladies
as Towerettes, a wait staff dressed as nurses to drive home the
message! The White Tower restaurant chain, begun by John and Thomas
Saxe, eventually grew to a whopping 230 locations by the 1950s. Tom's
son Brock eventually took over and the chain continued to thrive into
the 1980s when competition from larger fast-food concerns eventually
changed things for little corner burger joints everywhere. Today, there
is only one restaurant in the nation operating as a White Tower, a
location in Toledo, Ohio. The White Tower depicted in this colorful
scene was one located in New York City in the early 1930s. "White Tower" is faithfully reproduced from
McGehee's beautiful color pencil original as a hand-signed limited
edition of only 500 archival quality prints.
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