Who designed the distinctive arches on McDonald’s early restaurant buildings?

Stanley Clark Meston designed the distinctive arches on McDonald’s early restaurant buildings.

Meston was an architect who worked with Richard and Maurice McDonald on the design of their San Bernardino, California, restaurant. The brothers wanted a building that would be highly visible to passing motorists, so the design included large yellow arches at each side of the structure.

Those architectural arches became the inspiration for the company’s later Golden Arches symbol. This is an important distinction: Meston designed the physical restaurant features, while Jim Schindler created the modern corporate logo introduced in the early 1960s.

The arches were therefore part of McDonald’s visual identity before they became a standardized logo. Their shape also helped make the restaurants recognizable from the road, reflecting the chain’s early focus on automobile traffic and drive-in service.