Phoenix, Arizona, opened the first McDonald’s restaurant featuring Stanley Clark Meston’s Golden Arches design.
Meston designed the distinctive restaurant architecture for McDonald’s franchisee Neil Fox. The first building using the design opened in Phoenix in 1953, before the arches were transformed into the company’s famous graphic logo.
The city is sometimes confused with San Bernardino, California, where Richard and Maurice McDonald operated the restaurant that originated the McDonald’s system. Des Plaines, Illinois, is also important because Ray Kroc opened an early franchised McDonald’s there in 1955, but it was not the first restaurant with Meston’s Phoenix architectural design.
The arches initially functioned as roadside architecture intended to attract drivers. Their later combination into an “M” made the structure a powerful branding device, connecting restaurant design, signage, and corporate identity.