stephenh --
From my research, I am confident that the best source of historical
information about the Little Tavern chain of hamburger eateries ("Buy
'em by the Bag") is the Silver Spring Historical Society and its
president, Jerry A. McCoy. Here is a link to its Web site:
Silver Spring Historical Society
http://www.homestead.com/silverspringhistory/index.html
And here, from the home page of that site, is contact information for
its president:
Jerry A. McCoy, sshistory@yahoo.com, Silver Spring Historical Society,
PO Box 1160, Silver Spring, MD 20910-1160.
The Silver Spring Historical Society invites reproduction of the text
(but not the photographs) on its site. Since the best and most
complete summary of the Little Tavern chain is at that site, I will
give you here a substantial excerpt of that summary so that you can be
conveniently armed with that information when you start making your
own inquiries. Here it is:
"Who was Harry F. Duncan you ask? Why that's like asking who Ray Kroc
was (for you youngsters out there he was the guy who in 1955 started a
small hamburger franchise in Des Plaines, IL called McDonald's).
Duncan founded his Little Tavern chain in 1927 in Louisville, KY, a
full quarter century before Kroc (and no, Little Tavern wasn't the
first hamburger chain that honor goes to White Castle, founded in
Wichita, Kansas in 1921).
"In 1928 Harry and his wife Doris moved to Washington, DC where they
established their first Little Tavern Shop (or second as the case may
be) at 814 E Street, NW. The Duncans turned to engineer Charles E.
Brooks and architect George E. Stone of Baltimore's Stonebrook Corp.
who came up with a design for a hamburger stand based upon traditional
Tudor cottage architecture. For the rapidly growing quick-lunch
market, a Tudor "cottage" was meant to evoke feelings of warmth,
familiarity and good food. The look featured smallness of scale, a
steep roof, dormers and quoins.
"To instill a sense of modernity and cleanliness, the materials
utilized in the construction of the shops featured materials and
design techniques used in innovative ways porcelain enamel steel
panels, plate glass windows, neon signage, interior stainless steel
and streamlining (the exterior corners were slightly rounded with
alternating stripes of enameled green taking the place of traditional
stone, brick, or even wooden quoins!).
"By 1939 Washington, DC alone had 21 Little Tavern Shops with dozens
more distributed throughout the suburbs and as far away as Baltimore.
Silver Spring's Georgia Avenue location is shown here in a photograph
that appeared in the 1957 Montgomery Blair High School yearbook
Silverlogue. Anybody know who the Blair students are, a boy and a
girl, peeking into the front door?
"By the early 1980s with changing tastes and skyrocketing property
values, especially sites in the inner city, the ranks of Little Tavern
locations had been reduced to around 30 shops. The franchise was in
need of new life.
"Around 1983 in stepped Gerald Wedren and his architect, Timothy
Crosby. Together they restored six Little Taverns with 8230 Georgia
Avenue being one of them. The flagship Washington, DC restoration was
Little Tavern #6, built in 1931 and located at 630 N. Capitol Street,
across from the main post office. In 1988, only five years after its
loving restoration, the building was sold and demolished. A parking
lot occupies the site to this day.
"The most touted Little Tavern restoration in Montgomery County was
the circa 1939 structure located in Bethesda at 8100 Wisconsin Avenue.
So well-done was its restoration it was listed on Montgomery County's
Master Plan for Historic Preservation but sadly the current owner,
Golden House Chinese Carry-Out, has eradicated all of the restored
Little Tavern signage. The same owner has made even more alterations
to Silver Spring's other Little Tavern, a circa 1950s model located at
900 Wayne Avenue, it has been completely painted yellow!
The complete text of the Little Tavern's history can be found at this linked page:
Silver Spring Historical Society: Silver Spring: Then & Again; Little
Tavern, by Jerry A. McKay (May 2003)
http://www.homestead.com/silverspringhistory/LittleTavernThenAgain.html
I think you will agree that Mr. McKay and the Society would be a good
place for you to start your further research into the Little Tavern
chain.
However, I can also provide you with some interesting information that
updates the Society's summary of the chain's history.
For example, a July 27, 2003 story in the Washington Post provides
some fascinating information on how the Silver Spring community
managed to preserve its Little Tavern and the local history that goes
along with it by dismantling it and installing it in Silver Spring's
National Capital Trolley Museum. Here is a brief excerpt from that
story:
"Last month, a controversy erupted between the Silver Spring
Historical Society and Pyramid Atlantic, the arts organization that
had applied for a permit to demolish the Little Tavern building, whose
site is to become a community arts space. Members of the historical
society protested plans to raze the building and applied to have the
burger shop listed as a historic site -- a move rejected by Montgomery
County officials in a July 9 vote.
"Ultimately, it took just $3,500 to find a solution: That sum will pay
the costs of moving the shell of the building to the National Capital
Trolley Museum in Colesville. The museum stepped in last week to save
the former tavern, which will become part of a permanent street
exhibit."
The complete story can be found at this linked page, and I commend it
to your attention:
Washington Post: Silver Spring Saves A Slice of History: Former
Hamburger Stand Is Dismantled; Facade, Signage Preserved for Street
Exhibit, by Garance Burke, July 27, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A51446-2003Jul26¬Found=true
Here is a link to the website of the National Capital Trolley Museum,
which could prove to be a source of further information for you:
National Capital Trolley Museum
http://www.dctrolley.org/
And here, from that site, is contact information for the Museum:
National Capital Trolley Museum
1313 Bonifant Road
Colesville, Maryland 20905-5955
Telephone: (301)-384-6088
Finally, I have found several other sites which have interesting
images of Little Tavern restaurants and some other interesting tidbits
of information:
Here is a link to the website of Andrew County Museum & Historical
Society in Savannah, MO:
Andrew County Museum & Historical Society
http://digital.library.umsystem.edu/vm/fulldisplay.php?ControlNumber=114
That institution has some Little Tavern memorabilia that presumably
dates back to the pre-chain founding of a Little Tavern in St. Louis
in 1925. Here is contact information for that Society:
Patrick Clark (andcomus@ccp.com)
Andrew County Museum & Historical Society
202 East Duncan Drive, PO Box 12 Savannah, MO, 64485-0012
Phone: 816-324-4720/ Fax: 816-324-5271
Next, here is a link (available only as a Google-cached page) that
describes a WETA-TV documentary that "traced the history of downtown
Silver Spring from its founding in 1840 . . . ." It was produced
in partnership with the Silver Spring Historical Society, so you
should be able to get more information about that broadcast from
either WETA-TV or the Society:
WETA: Silver Spring
http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:g-YN0Z1COeEJ:www2.weta.org/tv/silverspring.html+%22little+tavern%22+hamburgers&hl=en
Next, here is a link to a website which contains reminiscences and
some images of Little Taverns in the Baltimore area:
Unsung Monuments in the Monumental City: "Taverns, Towers, and Coffee
Pots": The early days of fast food chains.
http://www.btco.net/ghosts/Buildings/tavetower/littaverns.html
Finally, here is a link to a site with lots of images of Little Taverns in the
Washington/Baltimore area:
Agilitynut:com: Eateries
http://www.agilitynut.com/eateries7b.html
Search Strategy:
I tried many Google searches in the search for this information.
These three were the most productive and might be of some use to you
in your further research:
"little tavern" hamburgers
://www.google.com/search?num=30&hl=en&q=%22little+tavern%22+hamburgers&spell=1
"little tavern" chain
://www.google.com/search?num=30&hl=en&lr=&q=%22little+tavern%22+chain
"little tavern" chain louisville
://www.google.com/search?q=%22little+tavern%22+chain+louisville&num=30&hl=en&lr=
I am confident that this information will you useful to you and will
give you some leads for your further research, as you requested. If
anything is unclear, please ask for clarification before rating the
answer.
markj-ga |
Clarification of Answer by
markj-ga
on
02 Nov 2004 09:28 PST
stephenh --
I am happy to provide the following supplement to my answer, based on
your clarification request.
At the outset, I should note that I had no idea that you had already
found and contacted Mr. McCoy and the Silver Spring Historical
Society. I also understood your question to mean that you were
primarily interested in the history of the Little Tavern chain. Based
on your clarification request, let me point to some information on the
historical preservation issue, some of which was included -- but not
sufficiently highlighted -- in my answer.
As I noted in my answer, the Silver Spring Historical Society
requested "historic site" status for the Georgia Ave. building in
1993. That request was rejected by the Montgomery County Historical
Preservation Commission in July of that year, apparently partly on the
basis that another Little Tavern site in Bethesda had already been
granted status as a historic site (in 1994).
Here is another reference to that action, from the Washington Post:
"The burger shop, built in 1935 and once the flagship store in the
Little Tavern chain, once appeared headed for official protection. In
1984, the Montgomery County Historic Preservation Commission placed
the building on its locational atlas, a listing of sites eligible to
be considered for historic designation. It was later removed, and in
1994 a counterpart in Bethesda was designated to be preserved because
it was in better condition."
Washington Post: Silver Spring Saves A Slice of History: Former
Hamburger Stand Is Dismantled; Facade, Signage Preserved for Street
Exhibit, by Garance Burke, July 27, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A51446-2003Jul26¬Found=true
You can learn more about the specifics of the rejection of that
request from this page at the website of the Montgomery County
Historical Preservation Commission:
Historic Preservation Meeting Agenda: July 9, 2003
http://www.mc-mncppc.org/historic/commission/HistoricPreservationCommissionMeetingAgenda.shtm
Please note that this page contains links to the documents that were
in the record of that proceeding, including a staff report on the
historic site designation request, the form and letter of nomination
submitted by the Silver Spring Historical Society, a response from
Montgomery Preservation, Inc., and comments submitted by the County
Executive and others. All of these documents may be of some interest
to you.
The Little Tavern site in Bethesda that was given "historic site"
status by the Montgomery County Historical Preservation Commission is
located at 8100 Wisconsin Ave. and is apparently currently housing a
business called Golden House Chinese Carry-Out.
One of the links I provided in my answer contains a photo of the
Bethesda site (about halfway down the page). Here is that link:
Agility Nut: Eateries: Little Tavern.
http://www.agilitynut.com/eateries7b.html
I have found no other online references to official historic
designations for Little Tavern sites, and I am reasonably confident
that this means that no other of the chain's sites fall into that
category.
As for your interest in sources for you to consult for further
information, I would renew my suggestion that you try the following:
For information on the Silver Spring site;
National Capital Trolley Museum
1313 Bonifant Road
Colesville, Maryland 20905-5955
Telephone: (301)-384-6088
For information on early Little Tavern memorabilia (in Missouri);
Patrick Clark (andcomus@ccp.com)
Andrew County Museum & Historical Society
202 East Duncan Drive, PO Box 12 Savannah, MO, 64485-0012
Phone: 816-324-4720/ Fax: 816-324-5271
Based on your special interest in historic preservation, I also
suggest that you contact and visit the Montgomery County Historic
Preservation Commission. Whatever proceedings it held on the historic
preservation status of the Bethesda location in 1994 are not available
online, but it is very likely that their file on the matter would be
available for inspection. Here is its contact information:
The Historic Preservation office is located at:
1109 Spring Street, Suite 801
Silver Spring, Maryland 20910
(301)-563-3400
Fax (301)-563-3412
E-mail: mcp-historic@mncppc-mc.org
Montgomery County Park and Planning: Historic Preservation Staff Contacts
http://www.mc-mncppc.org/historic/staff_contacts.shtm
I hope that this further information is useful to you, and good luck
in your continuing study of places of historical significance in the
Washington area.
markj-ga
|
