Who designed the original McDonald’s restaurant buildings with large yellow arches?

Stanley Clark Meston designed the original McDonald’s restaurant buildings with large yellow arches.

Meston was an architect who worked with McDonald’s brothers Richard and Maurice on the restaurant’s visual design. His 1950s concept used a low, streamlined building with two tall yellow arches rising above the roofline. The unusual profile helped passing motorists identify the restaurant quickly.

The first restaurant built with this design opened in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1953. The arches were functional branding: they made the building conspicuous before the modern standardized logo existed. Their color and curved form later supplied the visual foundation for McDonald’s corporate symbol.

Meston is sometimes confused with Ray Kroc, who expanded McDonald’s through franchising, or Jim Schindler, who designed the later interlocking-arches logo. Those figures played important roles, but Meston’s contribution was the original architectural treatment. The distinction matters because the Golden Arches evolved from a building design into a trademark.