A New Vintage Shop Takes Over Lyndale's Old White Castle Fortress

The small white castle at 3252 Lyndale Ave. S. has a new tenant. Justin Schaefer opened a vintage shop in the building on Oct. 8, stocking it with streetwear, vintage children's clothing and ephemera from the 1940s through the early 2000s, plus action figures, alt-rock albums and what he says is the largest collection of Zubaz pants of any dealer in the country.

The building is White Castle Building No. 8, a 1936 porcelain-enamel structure with crenelated towers and octagonal buttresses modeled loosely on the Chicago Water Tower. It was prefabricated by Porcelain Steel Buildings, a White Castle subsidiary, and designed to be moved: it stood at 616 Washington Ave. S.E. near the University of Minnesota, then at 329 Central Ave. S.E., before landing on Lyndale in 1984. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on Oct. 16, 1986, with the listing acknowledging that early White Castles were built to be relocated. In the years since the burger stand closed, the building has housed an accordion store, among other tenants.

The shop joins a cluster of resale and vintage stores that has turned this stretch of Lyndale into a destination for secondhand shoppers. Schaefer told Southwest Voices he used to walk past the building as a teenager on his way to nearby punk shops.