Two small White Castle slider hamburgers in cardboard boxes with french fries on a paper plate

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

It's a roadside icon. Even without the brand name or logo, hungry fast-food customers know exactly which restaurant is designed with miniature turrets on a white building. Inside, the signature small burgers are cooked over a bed of onions. Customers can "buy 'em by the sack," as the chain's slogan said. This is the story of White Castle, of course, founded in Wichita, Kansas in 1921. "White" signified purity, just 15 years after Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" had been published.

Five years later, two Wisconsin entrepreneurs liked this idea so much that they decided to do the same thing. Father and son team John and Thomas Saxe built a replica of White Castle in Milwaukee, right down to the measurements, and recreated almost everything about White Castle. They even hired a former White Castle employee to bring his intel — and his unique spatula. Their new restaurant: White Tower.

Naturally, White Castle didn't take kindly to this intruder, especially when they both established outposts in Detroit in the late 1920s, White Castle in 1928 and White Tower the following year. White Tower had copied White Castle's entire operation, even White Castle's signature menu. While White Castle sold sliders by the sack, hungry customers at White Tower could "take home a bagful." So White Castle sued White Tower, hoping to prevent them from using the name, menu, and design in Detroit and any other locations where the two chains, or "systems" as they were called, overlapped.

White Tower outlasted the lawsuit but soon faded to obscurity

Restaurant employee putting up closed sign

Graphicscoco/Getty Images

White Castle won the lawsuit, requiring White Tower to change its building design and slogan but allowing the Saxes to continue to sell sliders. White Tower appealed the decision, but lost. In an effort to separate the business further from White Castle, White Tower turned to art deco. New, streamlined, and sparkling-bright White Tower restaurants popped up in more than 200 locations across the country by the chain's peak in the 1950s.

The 1930s lawsuit between White Castle and White Tower didn't deter other imitators. As White Tower grew, so did White Diamond, White Rose, and White Manna, all of which opened similar burger-focused fast food joints in New Jersey, where White Castle and White Tower also had locations. Florida was the home of Royal Castle, another White Castle imitator.

Almost 350 White Castles dot the American landscape, and some of the other imitators are still thriving. White Manna, for instance, is not only still in business but serving some of the best burgers in New Jersey. But White Tower wasn't so successful. Its urban locations that relied on factory workers languished just as American cities' manufacturing industries did in the 1950s and while competitors moved out to the suburbs, White Tower faded away. The chain dissolved, but one independent location remained in Toledo, Ohio until a fire in 2022.