Downey has the oldest surviving McDonald’s restaurant building.
The building in Downey, California, opened in 1953 and retains the early restaurant design associated with McDonald’s distinctive roadside identity. Its large yellow arches made the building visible from a distance and helped establish the visual language later simplified into the Golden Arches logo.
The Downey site is often described as the oldest surviving McDonald’s location, although the company’s first restaurant was in San Bernardino. The San Bernardino restaurant opened earlier, in 1940, but the original building did not survive in the same form.
Des Plaines, Illinois, is another frequent source of confusion because it hosted an early McDonald’s restaurant and later a museum-style recreation. Downey’s significance is specifically its surviving 1950s building and its preserved architectural branding.