Who designed the 1950s McDonald’s restaurant buildings featuring the original yellow arches?

Stanley Clark Meston designed the 1950s McDonald’s restaurant buildings featuring the original yellow arches.

Meston was an architect who worked with McDonald’s during the company’s transition toward a highly standardized restaurant design. For the brothers’ new restaurant in Downey, California, he developed a building with prominent yellow parabolic arches on either side. The arches were intended to attract passing motorists and make the restaurant instantly identifiable.

The arches were first physical architecture, not the standalone corporate emblem familiar today. In 1962, Jim Schindler adapted the shapes into the overlapping “M” logo. That distinction matters: Meston designed the building and its arches, while Schindler is credited with the later logo design. The surviving Downey building helps show how McDonald’s branding grew from roadside architecture.