Little Tavern Shops was a chain of hamburger restaurants in Baltimore, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

The first Little Tavern opened March 24, 1927 in Louisville, Kentucky

Louisville, Kentucky

Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...

, by Harry F. Duncan. The first Washington location was opened in October 1928 and the first in Baltimore opened its doors in June of 1930. By 1937, there were 33 shops open. At the height of the chain, there were almost 50 locations. Duncan sold the chain in 1981. The last restaurant closed on April 29, 2008.

The slogan of the chain was "Buy 'em by the bag", and its signs promised "Cold drinks * Good Coffee". The stores were quite small and could accommodate only a few seated customers, while most business was take-out.

From 1928 to 1931, Little Taverns had block construction and their castle design closely resembled White Castles and White Towers of the same era. Baltimore No. 3, was the first Little Tavern to employ the "Tudor cottage" design that would become so closely associated with the chain for years to come.

Similar chains

• White Tower Hamburgers
  White Tower Hamburgers
  White Tower Hamburgers was founded in 1926 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and with its similar white fortress-like structure, is considered an imitator of White Castle...
  
   http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/archstories/restaurants/fast_food.asp
• White Castle
  White Castle (restaurant)
  White Castle is an American regional fast food hamburger restaurant chain in the Midwestern United States and in the New York metropolitan area, and the first of its kind in the US. It is known for its small, square hamburgers. Sometimes referred to as "sliders", the burgers were priced at five...
  
  
• Krystal
  Krystal (restaurant)
  Krystal is an American fast food restaurant chain known for their small, square hamburger sliders with steamed-in onions and 24/7 business hours. Krystal is often described as the Southern equivalent of the Midwest American hamburger chain White Castle...
  
  
• McDonald's
  McDonald's
  McDonald's Corporation is the world's largest chain of hamburger fast food restaurants, serving around 64 million customers daily in 119 countries. Headquartered in the United States, the company began in 1940 as a barbecue restaurant operated by the eponymous Richard and Maurice McDonald; in 1948...
  
   in its early years

External links

• Ghosts of Baltimore website
• http://www.homestead.com/silverspringhistory/LittleTavern.htmlHistorical preservation of Little Tavern in Silver Spring, Maryland
  Silver Spring, Maryland
  Silver Spring is an unincorporated area and census-designated place in Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. It had a population of 71,452 at the 2010 census, making it the fourth most populous place in Maryland, after Baltimore, Columbia, and Germantown.The urbanized, oldest, and...
  
  ]
• The adaptive reuse of Little Taverns