Who designed the McDonald’s Golden Arches as an architectural feature in the 1950s?

Architect Stanley Clark Meston designed the Golden Arches as architectural features for McDonald’s restaurants in the 1950s.

Meston worked with architect Charles Fishman on the design of the new McDonald’s restaurant in Phoenix, Arizona. The building used two large yellow arches at opposite sides of the structure, making the restaurant visible from the road and giving it a distinctive silhouette.

The arches were originally part of the building rather than an independent corporate logo. Their shape later became the basis of McDonald’s most recognizable symbol. In 1962, the company adopted a redesigned version of the arches as a standalone logo, allowing the mark to appear on packaging, signs, advertising, and other materials.

People often credit Ray Kroc with creating the arches because he expanded McDonald’s nationally, but Kroc was not the architect who designed them. Jim Schindler is associated with the later logo redesign, not the original restaurant architecture.