McDonald’s opened its first restaurant using the Golden Arches design in 1953.
The restaurant was in Downey, California, and was operated by McDonald’s franchisee Roger Williams and partner Burdette Landon. Architect Stanley Meston designed the building, which used large yellow arches as prominent roadside features.
These early arches were part of the building rather than the later standalone corporate logo. Their shape and color made the restaurant easy to identify from a distance, especially for motorists approaching along busy roads.
McDonald’s later transformed the architectural idea into the stylized “M” logo designed by Jim Schindler in 1962. This is why 1953 and 1962 both appear in accounts of the arches: 1953 marks the first restaurant architecture using them, while 1962 marks the modern logo. The Downey building survived and became an important preserved example of early McDonald’s design.