Downey’s historic McDonald’s at 65: Memories bitter and sweet shared under the golden arches

By Brooke Becher, contributing reporter

A billboard in black hangs over Stanley Meston’s mid-century, Googie creation complete with red and white tile-trim and slant roofing hugged by two iconic 30-foot golden arches. It houses the world’s longest-operating McDonald’s, which opened in Downey on Aug. 18, 1953.

Year-round in white text, the billboard warns “don’t let history pass you by.”

More than 100 attendees came out to celebrate the site’s 65th anniversary on Saturday, Aug. 18, at a midafternoon event hosted by the Downey Conservancy.

“I remember when they opened,” said Rebecca Castro Zepeda, 69, from Whittier.

She’s grown up with the world’s largest restaurant chain (by revenue) and continues to enjoy the more new-age, Big-Mac-and-ball-pit-Ronald-McDonald eateries with her grandchildren, one of whom accompanied her to the weekend event.

Zepeda and her four sisters would pile into their father’s old Mercury, nicknamed the “Badillac,” for special occasions, like a payday or her sister Josephine’s graduation.

“We would go in and buy our 10 hamburgers,” she said, two per girl. “Back then it was such a treat, just getting a hamburger.”

The billboard shares the sky with a world-famous landmark: the winking, moon-faced chef known as Speedee. Outlined in neon lights, he’s the original mascot, preceding the kid-friendly clown. A long-standing icon of ‘50s Americana, he balances atop a 60-foot single gold arch on the corner of Florence Avenue and Lakewood Boulevard.

“You know it took two full cement trucks – one for each pillar – to weigh those down,” said Todd Landon Sell,  grandson of Burdette “Bud” Landon, original co-owner along with Roger Williams.

“My grandparents risked everything for this. They sold their house, their car,” the 53-year-old from San Clemente said, emphasizing the severity of this pain through detail: it was a 1949 Mercury convertible, salmon with tan interior. “Within six months of operation, they knew they had something.”

 

“Paris has the Eiffel Tower. New York has the Empire State Building. Downey has this – the oldest McDonald’s in the world, a genuine article of history.”

–Humorist/historian Charles Phoenix

 

In addition to the golden arches, Downey also was home to the first Taco Bell – a structure that now lives in Irvine – and is the site of one of the last five Bob’s Big Boy Broiler diners.

The independent McDonald’s franchise sold hamburgers at 15 cents, undercutting the price of a dine-in restaurant meal by half at the time, leaving the extra cents to pair with 10 cent fries or Coke – or a 20 cent milkshake.

Like many Americans, Sell got his start at McDonald’s, too – when he was 3 years old, standing on a milk carton squirting ketchup and mustard on buns. Or, wait – it’s mustard first, then ketchup.

“Ketchup first would make the bun soggy, so it’s gotta be mustard first. If they caught you doing it wrong you would get yelled at,” Sell recalled, as could the mistake of drinking out of cups other than the designated employee water vessels. Roger Williams counted the cups for inventory. “Roger would freak out. It was serious stuff.”

That’s how he knows that, in its first two years of operation, the Speedee site sold 2 million hamburgers and 429,264 shakes.

He shared McMemories about how the McDonald brothers, Richard and Maurice, went by “Dick” and “Mac” respectively. Mac was a really big guy, hence the “Big Mac.”

But it’s hard for the San Clemente grandson to make it out to the historic site, though he commutes every year for the anniversary, which, by the way, rarely sees any type of jubilee, he said.

Celebrating this stores 65th anniversary with @riderunnat (at @McDonalds in Downey, CA) https://t.co/vvCUXQpOzI pic.twitter.com/ASaOShAEBB

— Smplefy (@smplefy) August 18, 2018

The only reason the site still stands as is, he said, was the McDonald brothers’ independence from Ray Kroc – who bought out the brothers in 1961 for $2.7 million – and his corporate agenda. But the lack of modernization – like a drive-thru window, indoor seating or the inclusion of menu items developed within the corporation such as the Big Mac or McMuffin – resulted in poor sales and its eventual closure and acquisition in 1990.

The Kroc-led demolition of old-school sites from 1968 to 1980 across the country and the opening of a modern, corporate McDonald’s down the street from his grandparents’ business has left a lasting bitter taste, he said.

The only tie Sell has with his grandparents’ legacy is the common stock check he gets every 90 days. Though his grandmother warned him as a toddler to let go of his supersized dream –– inheriting the company –– he admitted, it’s still hard to let it go completely.

“I still think about it,” he said. “It’s still the dream.”

The 1994 Northridge earthquake shook up business even further, causing damages that threatened the site’s demolition until the National Trust for Historic Preservation added the classic burger stand to its 11 Most Endangered Historic Places list – Speedee signage and all.

With the help of historians, preservationists and McDevotees, the site dodged a wrecking ball, and the McDonald’s company spent two years restoring the site, even including a next-door museum shelving Happy Meal toys of the past.

Current City Councilman and former Lakewood Mayor Ron Piazza started as a fry-cook at McDonald’s when he was 16. Now he owns 19 golden-arch eateries, including the 65-year-old retrofitted site.

He’s the first owner since its restoration, and since his first day on the job in 1998, he balances breaking even as a business with honoring the historic ‘50s landmark.

 

“I’m doing as much as I can to get the customers what they want without making it look like something other than the Speedee restaurant,” he said, noting that he doesn’t expect the location to make a profit.

Now with a hidden drive-thru around the back added last September, he said, “I think we can survive.”

Burgers and fries aside: Can fast fooderies be beloved historical sites?

“This is a national treasure,” American pop-culture humorist and historian Charles Phoenix said of the world-class tourist destination. “Paris has the Eiffel Tower. New York has the Empire State Building. Downey has this –– the oldest McDonald’s in the world, a genuine article of history.”

Donning a soda-jerk paper cap and cradling his latest book “Addicted to Americana,” he dubbed Meston’s “happy, optimistic” architecture a masterpiece, calling it radical avant-garde of its day – with emphasis on its shapely, flashy sign.

“If this were not here, it should be in the Louvre,” he added.

“Whether you like their hamburgers or not,” Phoenix said. “McDonald’s changed the way Americans live.”