Who designed the original McDonald’s restaurant building with its distinctive red-and-white striped roof?

Stanley Clark Meston designed the original McDonald’s restaurant building with its distinctive red-and-white striped roof.

Meston was an architect in Southern California who worked with the McDonald brothers and their supplier Walter Talton. His design used a low, streamlined building, large service windows, bright colors, and two tall yellow arches projecting above the roof. These features made the restaurant easy to recognize from the road.

The building style became closely associated with the McDonald’s brand during the 1950s. The arches were not initially intended only as a logo; they were part of the physical architecture used to attract motorists and identify the restaurant.

Later restaurants adopted many different formats, and the original design was eventually replaced in most locations. Even so, Meston’s architecture supplied the visual ingredients from which the Golden Arches identity developed.