The Vintage McDonald's Location That Was Turned Into A Museum

Legendary McDonald's owner Ray Kroc, whose vision and leadership drove it to become the world's largest fast food chain, opened his historic first location in Des Plaines, Illinois, in 1955. But McDonald's actual founding took place 15 years earlier, when brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald opened a barbecue restaurant in San Bernardino, California. That first eatery was demolished long ago, and the brothers' involvement with McDonald's ended in 1961 when they sold to Kroc for $2.7 million. However, the vintage location is now home to an unofficial McDonald's museum.

The First Original McDonald's Museum doesn't have any connection to the chain itself, which had its own McDonald's Store No. 1 Museum at the Des Plaines location from 1985 to 2018. Despite that, the corporate giant hasn't tried to shut it down. The museum opened in 1998 after the building was bought by Albert Okura, who owned the Juan Pollo rotisserie chicken chain. Okura, who died in 2023, was motivated to enter the fast food industry by McDonald's success and decided to open the museum at the place where it all began.

The museum is filled with McDonald's memorabilia, from early food packaging, employee uniforms, and menus, to old photos, to decades of vintage Happy Meal toys, and much more. There are colorful statues of characters like Ronald McDonald and the Hamburglar, and a big Golden Arches greets visitors at the entrance. A large, old McDonald's sign out front advertises 15-cent burgers, and a mural on the front outside wall depicts the McDonald brothers and their restaurant.

McDonald's is one of the popular restaurant chains that looked very different when it first opened. The McDonald brothers' original McDonald's Barbecue was a drive-in spot with carhops, where customers ate at outdoor seating or in their cars. The menu also featured other food like sandwiches and tamales, and while the place was popular, people were ordering more burgers and fries than barbecue. Richard and Maurice McDonald revamped the restaurant in 1948, paring down the menu to focus on burgers, fries, and milkshakes, and reopened as McDonald's Hamburgers. They also developed a groundbreaking "Speedee Service" operations system. While still a drive-in restaurant, it dropped the carhops. Customers instead ordered and picked up at windows.

The brothers hired architect Stanley Meston to create a new eye-catching restaurant design as they began franchising in 1953. Meston came up with a red and white design with yellow arches swooping over the roof on each side, fulfilling Richard's desire to include arches. All franchises used the design, and the San Bernardino restaurant was torn down in 1953 and replaced with one of the arched buildings.

Richard and Maurice kept the San Bernardino location when they sold the McDonald's business and its nine franchises to Kroc, and continued operating it as Mac's Place. Kroc opened a McDonald's across the street, driving them to shut down several years later. The Golden Arches building was demolished in 1972, and an office building was constructed in its place, which today houses the museum.