QSR History | 10207 Lakewood Boulevard — The Store the Corporation Could Not Rebuild

This is a 1953 hamburger stand still selling hamburgers, and it survived by an accident of paperwork. It opened on 18 August 1953 at Lakewood Boulevard and Florence Avenue as the third McDonald's restaurant, and the second licensed by Richard and Maurice McDonald themselves. That second detail is why it is still standing. When the corporation later standardised its buildings and cleared away the old red-and-white stands across America, this one sat outside its reach — franchised by the brothers rather than by the company. Stanley Clark Meston, a commercial architect from Fontana, designed the type. The brothers wanted a building that advertised the kitchen from the road, so he wrapped it in glass, tiled it red and white, and drove two yellow arches straight through the roofline. Meston later described the commission as designing a factory. The animated neon Speedee sign on the corner arrived with a sign replacement in 1959, and it still runs. The store nearly went in the 1990s. It closed in January 1994 after Northridge earthquake damage and weak takings, with demolition planned and a retro-styled replacement proposed nearby. The National Trust for Historic Preservation named it to its 1994 list of America's eleven most endangered historic places, and preservationists and customers pushed back hard enough to stop the wrecking ball. It reopened on 15 December 1996, restored, with a small museum and gift shop added alongside. Two things surprise people who come expecting a normal branch. There is no indoor seating in the original building, because the design never had any — you order at a window and eat outside or in your car. And there was no drive-thru until 2016, which makes this the rare McDonald's that spent sixty-three years without one. The right phrase for it is the oldest McDonald's still operating, not the oldest McDonald's. The 1940 original in San Bernardino is older by thirteen years and has been gone for decades; this is simply what is left standing, still taking orders at the window. Photo: Northwalker, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons