The nostalgic, turreted White Castle near Queens Center mall in Elmhurst is set to shutter next week.<\/p>\n
Restaurant manager Elsa Lima told the Chronicle Tuesday that the property at 89-03 57 Ave. has been sold, and the location\u2019s last day of service will be June 24.<\/p>\n
Lima said she believes an apartment building will replace it, but she did not know who the new owner is.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s sad,\u201d she said, saying customers are \u201cnot happy\u201d White Castle is leaving and have been calling the restaurant about the closure.<\/p>\n
Plenty of people feel that way. James McMenamin of Elmhurst posted about the closure in a neighborhood Facebook group Tuesday, and he later told the Chronicle that when he visited the restaurant that day, patrons seemed to be commiserating.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe iconic location I believe opened about the time of the 39-40 World\u2019s Fair, a familiar recognizable spot on the landscape that evoked nostalgia, in a radically and quickly being altered Queens Blvd.,\u201d McMenamin said.<\/p>\n
According to area historian Michael Perlman, the location first opened in 1939 and was rebuilt in 1963 and again in the 2000s. It was renovated about a year ago, and he said it is \u201csenseless to undo that among its longtime cultural history.\u201d<\/p>\n
Multiple commenters on McMenamin\u2019s post said the closure marked \u201cthe end of an era.\u201d Many of them reflected on their fond memories of the restaurant.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sad to see this location close,\u201d Jimmy Sarmiento wrote. \u201cI grew up in Elmhurst for the majority of my life, worked at the Queens Center as a kid and partied like a rock star in my clubbing days and WC was the go to at 4\/5 am to grab those lovely murder burgers!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember when I was a kid they would bring your order out to the car with a tray that hung from your window,\u201d Shawyn Maley commented. \u201cSo many belly bomb runs there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some users recalled going on dates there as teenagers. Others referred to the restaurant as a Queens landmark.<\/p>\n
Perlman believes the building\u2019s history and architecture merits preserving.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt does not need to be an elegant officially designated landmark to see the need to preserve it, even if it\u2019s on a humble scale,\u201d he said, suggesting that the developer build alongside the structure and cantilever over it instead of demolishing it.<\/p>\n
Beau Brent, the lead singer of glam metal band FerreTT who was inducted into White Castle\u2019s Cravers Hall of Fame last year, also is sad to see the joint go. The Elmhurst location was his home base for more than a decade when he lived in Kew Gardens \u2014 he even mentions it in a song he wrote lauding the restaurant\u2019s \u201cfood for the gods.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI love that White Castle, and it\u2019s definitely surprising because it\u2019s always been crowded, every time I\u2019ve been there,\u201d Brent said.<\/p>\n
He and his band plan to visit the restaurant one last time after their practice on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The most recent documents attached to the White Castle\u2019s address on the Automated City Register Information System were dated in 2020 and filed in 2023, permitting restaurant and drive-thru operations.<\/p>\n
The address did not yield any results on the Department of City Planning\u2019s Zoning Application Portal.<\/p>\n
White Castle\u2019s press team responded to the Chronicle\u2019s request for comment and additional information, but did not provide them by press time Wednesday.<\/p>\n
McMenamin said that \u201cevery month it seems some vestige from the past is closing or being replaced\u201d \u2014 Elmhurst\u2019s St. Bartholomew Catholic Academy is set to close, and he went to its final graduation last week.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard to keep up with massive change on such a scale, especially when what becomes new presents a blandness and hardly welcoming feeling,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The nostalgic, turreted White Castle near Queens Center mall in Elmhurst is set to shutter next week. Restaurant…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[104527,288,2184,22987,9,24,63,122,25665,124,123,53816],"class_list":["post-271103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-57th-avenue","tag-business","tag-development","tag-elmhurst","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-center","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-white-castle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}