Stanley Meston designed the original yellow arches for McDonald’s 1953 restaurant in Downey, California. The arches were architectural features intended to make the restaurant visible to passing motorists.
Meston worked with the McDonald brothers on the design of their new restaurant building. The arches stood at the sides of the structure and extended above the roofline. Their bright yellow color and large scale made them effective roadside markers before the modern logo existed.
The Downey restaurant is now preserved as the oldest surviving McDonald’s restaurant building and operates as the oldest McDonald’s museum. Its architecture shows how the arches began as part of a building’s identity rather than as a standalone corporate mark.
Stanley Meston is sometimes confused with Jim Schindler. Meston designed the physical arches, while Schindler later combined the architectural shapes into the familiar logo in 1962. That distinction explains why both names appear in histories of the Golden Arches.