McDonald’s introduced the Golden Arches as part of its restaurant architecture in 1953.
The arches were created for a new McDonald’s restaurant design in the early 1950s. Architect Stanley Clark Meston and his assistant Charles Fish designed large yellow arches that stood at the sides of the building. The arches were visible from the road and helped make the restaurants recognizable to passing motorists.
The first restaurant built with the arches opened in Downey, California, in 1953. That building survives as the oldest operating McDonald’s restaurant and is now associated with the chain’s architectural history. The arches originally served a physical architectural and roadside-sign function rather than beginning as a purely graphic logo.
The Golden Arches later became one of the world’s best-known commercial symbols. People sometimes date the symbol only to the later “M” logo, but the architectural arches appeared several years before the familiar logo was formalized.