Downey, California, contains the oldest surviving McDonald’s restaurant, known for preserving an early golden-arch design.
The restaurant opened in 1953 and was operated by Roger Williams and Burdette Landon, franchisees of the McDonald brothers. Its building retained the distinctive mid-century restaurant form, including the tall yellow arches that helped make McDonald’s recognizable from the road.
San Bernardino is important because Richard and Maurice McDonald opened their original restaurant there in 1940. It is not the location of the oldest surviving McDonald’s building. Des Plaines is associated with Ray Kroc’s first McDonald’s franchise, which opened in 1955.
The Downey restaurant is especially valuable for branding history because it shows the arches as architecture rather than merely as a flat logo. The site later became a museum and remains a visible link to McDonald’s early visual identity.