The Golden Arches are the symbol of McDonald's, the global fast food restaurant chain. Originally, real arches were part of the restaurant design. They were incorporated into the chain's logo in 1962, which resembled a stylized restaurant, and in the current Golden Arches logo, introduced 1968, resembling an "M" for "McDonald's". They are widely regarded to be one of the most recognizable logos in the world.
In 1952, brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald decided they needed a new building to house their hamburger restaurant in San Bernardino, California. They wanted this building to have an entirely new design which would achieve two goals: even greater efficiency, and an eye-catching appearance. They interviewed at least four architects altogether, finally choosing Stanley Clark Meston, an architect practicing in nearby Fontana, in late 1952. The arches had a direct bearing on the interviewing process and their choice of Meston: the first architect they interviewed objected to the arches the brothers wanted; a second wanted to change the arches; a third, prominent Los Angeles architect Douglas Honnold, said that if the brothers were going to tell him what to do they would be better off doing it themselves. [1]
Along with their practical knowledge, the brothers brought Meston a rough sketch of two half-circle arches drawn by Richard. The idea of an arch had struck Richard as a memorable shape to make their stand more visible. After considering one arch parallel to the front of the building, he had sketched two half-circles on either side of the stand. [1] Meston, together with his assistant Charles Fish, responded with a design which included two 25-foot (7.6 m) yellow sheet-metal arches trimmed in neon, called "golden arches" even at the design stage. His design also included a third, smaller arch sign at the roadside with a pudgy character in a chef's hat, known as Speedee, striding across the top, trimmed in animated neon.
According to architectural historian Alan Hess, "Meston and Fish turned the crude half-circle suggested by Richard McDonald's sketch into a tapered, sophisticated parabola, with tense, springing lines conveying movement and energy." [1] In the same article Hess added this footnote: "Who first suggested the parabola is unclear. Richard McDonald and George Dexter, the sign contractor who fabricated the first arches, recalled that Dexter came up with the idea and added them to the plans. Charles Fish, who did the working drawings and aided Meston in the design, attributes the idea to his familiarity with the form from a school project in which he used structural parabolas for a hangar. The form was one of many advanced engineering solutions, including folded plate roofs, that were in common currency." [1]
The first franchised outlet bearing Meston's design opened in May 1953 in Phoenix, Arizona. Subsequent franchisees of the McDonald brothers were also required to use Meston's design, although Meston adapted the plans for each to the conditions and building codes of each site. [1]
In 1962, seeking to upgrade its image, the company sought a new logo. Fred Turner sketched a stylized "V", but the company's head of engineering and design, Jim Schindler, extended the "V" into an "M" resembling a McDonald's store viewed from an angle, with a red isosceles trapezoid "roof" serving as background for lettering. [2]
While McDonald's dropped the physical arches from nearly all of its restaurants in the 1960s[ citation needed ], the Golden Arches have remained in the logo, and as a commonly understood term for the company. This was partially due to Louis Cheskin's argument that the arches, which he likened to "mother McDonald's breasts", had "Freudian applications to the subconscious mind of the consumer and were great assets in marketing McDonald's food." [3]
Alan Hess summarized the arch's origin in Googie architecture and ultimate significance as follows:
The arch was conceived by businessman Richard McDonald, an untrained designer with no knowledge of erudite architectural examples. His intent was pragmatic: to be noticed. This determined its scale, position, and simple shape visible over long distances following the precedent of earlier drive-ins with which he was familiar. To McDonald, the arch was an arbitrary form, without symbolic or historic associations, which he hoped would come to symbolize McDonald's. The arches' position implies no traditional use of the arch as an entry, nor are they structural. The architect delineated this formal concept determined by the client in the energetic lines and machine-like surfaces of a popular commercial vernacular style current in the 1940s and 1950s ... Meston's design proved successful as design and icon because of, not in spite of, its commercialism. [1]
All restaurants operated by McDonald's Canada use a variation of the Golden Arches, which features a maple leaf inserted into the centre of the Golden Arches; subsuming a Canadian national symbol into its corporate symbol. [4]
The McDonald's arches in Sedona, Arizona, were made turquoise when the yellow color had been deemed by government officials to be contrasting too much against the scenic red rock. [5]
As of 2019, seven McDonald's signs only have one arch, including locations in Magnolia, New Jersey; Winter Haven, Florida; Montrose, Colorado; and McDonald's sign in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. [6]
The McDonald's restaurant at 610 Del Monte Ave., Monterey, California, has black arches. [7]
The McDonald's in North Scottsdale, Arizona, on 18241 N Pima Rd also has black arches. [8] [ better source needed ]
The McDonald's restaurant at 2172 Sunset Blvd. in Rocklin, California, has dark red arches. [9] [ better source needed ]
The restaurant at Champs-Elysées in Paris, France, includes a neon McDonald's sign with white arches. Also, a recently[ when? ] built McDonald's in Bruges, Belgium, has white arches. [10]
In 2017, McDonald's China Division was renamed to Golden Arches while keeping the restaurant's name as McDonald's. [11] McDonald's spokesperson explained that the re-name was due to McDonald's Corporation sold bulk of its China Division to CITIC Group and Carlyle Capital. [12]
In 2018 and again in 2019, McDonald's turned the arches upside down on its social media accounts in celebration of International Women's Day, changing the "M" to a "W." A McDonald's franchise operated by Patricial Williams in Lynwood, California, also flipped the arches on its sign. [13] [14] This prompted a mild backlash, with some arguing that the move was hypocritical due to the chain's underpaying of employees, and others observing that the "M" in the logo could just as easily stand for "men" as it could for "McDonald's." [15]
The term "Golden Arches" is sometimes used as metonym, symbolizing capitalism and globalization. [16] [17] In phrases such as the "Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention", it is asserted that "No two countries that both had McDonald's had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald's". McDonald's Golden Arches is used as it is one of the more prominent American corporations that have become global in their reach (along with Coca-Cola and Nike).
The shape and color of the prominent space frame trusses used in the heavy-lift ship VB-10,000 have led some to nickname it the "Golden Arches". [18] [19] [20]
Pizza Hut is an American multinational pizza restaurant chain and international franchise founded in 1958 in Wichita, Kansas by Dan and Frank Carney.
Googie architecture is a type of futurist architecture influenced by car culture, jets, the Atomic Age and the Space Age. It originated in Southern California from the Streamline Moderne architecture of the 1930s, and was popular in the United States from roughly 1945 to the early 1970s.
International Dairy Queen, Inc. (DQ) is an American multinational fast food chain founded in 1940. It is currently headquartered in Bloomington, Minnesota. The first Dairy Queen was owned and operated by Sherb Noble and first opened on June 22, 1940, in Joliet, Illinois. It serves a variety of hot and fried food, as well as original frozen dairy products that vary from location to location.
Richard James McDonald and Maurice James McDonald, collectively known as the McDonald Brothers, were American entrepreneurs who founded the fast food company McDonald's. They opened the original McDonald's restaurant in 1940 in San Bernardino, California, where they created the Speedee Service System to produce their meals, a method that became the standard for fast food. After hiring Ray Kroc as their franchise agent in 1954, they continued to run the company until they were bought out by Kroc in 1961.
McDonald's Corporation is an American multinational fast food chain, founded in 1940 as a restaurant operated by Richard and Maurice McDonald, in San Bernardino, California, United States. They rechristened their business as a hamburger stand, and later turned the company into a franchise, with the Golden Arches logo being introduced in 1953 at a location in Phoenix, Arizona. In 1955, Ray Kroc, a businessman, joined the company as a franchise agent and in 1961 bought out the McDonald brothers. Previously headquartered in Oak Brook, Illinois, it moved to nearby Chicago in June 2018. McDonald's is also a real estate company through its ownership of around 70% of restaurant buildings and 45% of the underlying land.
The McDonald's #1 Store Museum was housed in a replica of the former McDonald's restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois, US, opened by Ray Kroc in April 1955. The company usually refers to this as The Original McDonald's, although it was actually the ninth McDonald's restaurant.
The Daniel Carter Beard Bridge, is a yellow twin span steel bowstring arch bridge crossing the Ohio River in Cincinnati, Ohio. It carries Interstate 471 between Cincinnati, Ohio, and Newport, Kentucky. As to the origin of this nickname, its yellow arches are said to be similar to the "Golden Arches" logo of McDonald's restaurant. The nickname was coined by local residents after the bridge's golden arches were constructed. In the 1980s, McDonald's considered opening a floating restaurant at the base after the nickname caught on, but never went to construction. This bridge has a main span of 750 feet (230 m) and has a total span of 2,100 feet (640 m). It is named in honor of Daniel Carter Beard, the founder of the Sons of Daniel Boone and one of the founders of the Boy Scouts of America.
The American fast-food restaurant chain McDonald's was founded in 1940 and has since grown to the world's largest restaurant chain by revenue.
McDonald's Restaurants of Canada, Limited is the Canadian master franchise of the fast-food restaurant chain McDonald's, owned by the American parent McDonald's Corporation. One of Canada's largest fast-food restaurant chains, the franchise sells food items – including hamburgers, chicken, French fries and soft drinks – all across the country. McDonald's is known for its high fat and calorie foods, but it also has alternatives such as salads, juice and milk. McDonald's was Canada's largest food-service operator before being overtaken by Tim Hortons in 2005.
The McDonald's Chicago Flagship is a flagship McDonald's restaurant located in Chicago.
The McDonald's Sign, also known as McDonald's Store #433 Sign, in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, United States, is one of only a few surviving examples of a single-arch McDonald's sign. The sign was erected in 1962 and remained at its original location until 2007. That year, McDonald's Store #433 moved and the sign was renovated and moved to the new location. The McDonald's sign was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 2006, but is no longer standing at 2819 S. Olive St.
A parabolic arch is an arch in the shape of a parabola. In structures, their curve represents an efficient method of load, and so can be found in bridges and in architecture in a variety of forms.
McDonald's Israel is the Israeli master franchise of the fast food restaurant chain McDonald's. Operated and licensed by Alonyal Limited, McDonald's Israel is the largest of Israel's burger chains with a 60% market share. It was the first Israeli outlet to be opened in 1993 and a major competitor of the local restaurant chain Burger Ranch. The world's first kosher McDonald's was opened in Mevaseret Zion in October 1995.
The oldest McDonald's restaurant is a drive-up hamburger stand at 10207 Lakewood Boulevard at Florence Avenue in Downey, California, United States. It was the third McDonald's restaurant and opened on August 18, 1953. It was also the second restaurant franchised by Richard and Maurice McDonald, before the involvement of Ray Kroc in the company. The restaurant is the oldest one in the chain still in existence and is one of Downey's main tourist attractions. Along with its sign, it was deemed eligible for addition to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, although it was not added at the time because the owner objected.
Stanley Clark Meston was an American architect most famous for designing the original golden arches of McDonald's restaurants. In an article about the origin of McDonald's golden arches, architectural historian Alan Hess wrote: "Nationwide success and proliferation have obscured the origins and creators of [the arches] in Southern California. Its architect, Stanley Clark Meston, has virtually never been credited with his contribution to American architecture."
The Founder is a 2016 American biographical drama film directed by John Lee Hancock and written by Robert Siegel. Starring Michael Keaton as businessman Ray Kroc, the film depicts the story of his creation of the McDonald's fast-food restaurant chain, which eventually involved forcing out the company's original founders to take control with conniving ruthlessness. Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch co-star as McDonald's founders Richard and Maurice McDonald, alongside Linda Cardellini as Ray Kroc's third wife Joan Smith, and B. J. Novak as McDonald's president and chief executive Harry J. Sonneborn.
Douglas Honnold was an award-winning Canadian-born American architect. He designed many residential properties and commercial buildings in Los Angeles, California. He won an Honor Award from the Southern California Chapter of the American Institute of Architects in January 1947 for his design of the Embassy Shop in Beverly Hills alongside architect John Lautner. He turned down the offer to design the famous McDonald's golden arches.
From 1990 to 2022, the American fast food chain McDonald's operated and franchised McDonald's restaurants in Russia.
Vkusno i tochka is a Russian fast food chain based in former McDonald's restaurants, with a menu that largely consists of rebranded McDonald's items. McDonald's closed their Russian stores in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine; Vkusno i tochka restaurants mostly occupy former McDonald's restaurants that were sold to business magnate and entrepreneur Alexander Govor, who was a company licensee in Siberia.
If you were travelling along Louisiana's coast last week, you may have seen giant golden arches floating in the Gulf of Mexico. No, McDonalds did not open an offshore location. The arches are actually those of the VB 10,000 – a massive, floating piece of equipment that is used for salvaging and decommissioning oil platforms.
[Versabar] has decommissioned more than 200 platforms in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) using its VB-4000 vessel, aka Bottom Feeder, VB-10000, nicknamed Golden Arches, and third party crafts.
It appeared on the horizon last week like a massive floating ERECTOR Set, or golden arches for the world's largest McDonald's or a seaworthy amusement park ride.
Media related to Golden Arches at Wikimedia Commons