McDonald’s Gives a Break to Historic Downey Restaurant

Jeff Schwartz began working for McDonald’s 28 years ago as a teenage floor sweeper and burger flipper, and boasts that he has never had another employer except for “baby-sitting and shoveling snow.”

So when he became Los Angeles regional vice president in January, he brought a special appreciation for hamburger history to the debate over the red-and-white-tiled McDonald’s restaurant in Downey. Reversing a controversial company decision, Schwartz announced Thursday that the oldest surviving McDonald’s in the nation would be restored and reopened Dec. 15 with a menu and uniforms that seek to evoke its 1953 origins. A museum and gift shop will be built next door.

“It’s simply the right thing to do, and I’ve got to tell you, it feels great,” Schwartz said at a ceremony at Downey City Hall.

As a result, he has become something of a hero to city officials and architectural preservationists, who had argued with his predecessors since the restaurant at Lakewood Boulevard and Florence Avenue was closed nearly three years ago.

On Thursday, Kathryn Welch Howe, president of the Los Angeles Conservancy, called the burger stand with its 60-foot-high neon sign of Speedee the hustling chef “one of the most influential designs of commercial architecture in the 20th century and in the development of the suburbs.”

She said Schwartz was key to its return, along with Downey Mayor Joyce Lawrence and the Pep Boys auto supply chain, which owns the property in a Downey shopping center and will lease it again to the McDonald’s Corp.

Prices at the restored eatery won’t be from the Eisenhower era, but a lot of other things will, Schwartz noted.

Milkshakes will be individually mixed, not dispensed from a huge machine. The menu will stress hamburgers, cheeseburgers and fries and exclude such modern additions as breakfasts, salads, chicken nuggets and Arch Deluxes. (Big Macs and Happy Meals will be offered as a matter of economic survival, Schwartz said.)

Downey cooks and servers will wear a uniform of white shirt, paper hat and bolo tie. Dining will still be strictly outdoors, with 50 seats added to the existing 20. The kitchen will be modernized but will include 1950s-style stainless steel cabinets and counters. Now motionless and rusty atop his big golden arch, Speedee will receive a neon overhaul.

Just to the west of the original 1,200-square-foot structure, McDonald’s plans to build a 830-square-foot museum and gift shop. Customers will be able to buy T-shirts, hats and miniature Speedee dolls and view exhibits about the Southern California birth of a hamburger that went on to devour the world.

The gift shop will echo the restaurant’s 1953 design by architect Stanley Clark Meston of Fontana. He and the McDonald brothers created daring arches, slanting glass and bright colors to attract motorists and take advantage of the California climate. The style was “bold, modern, forward-looking, high-tech energetic, exuberant, optimistic--all things we were back then” architectural historian Alan Hess has said.

Schwartz would not reveal the restoration price, other than to say it will be less than $1 million but twice the amount it would cost to build a completely new building.

Whatever the price, the company is counting on nostalgia to more than pay the bill. When he first saw the Downey stand 10 months ago, Schwartz was infused with a warm memories of the similar Speedee-style stand in his Minnesota hometown, where he worked along with a young woman he later married.

Many fans of the Downey restaurant have their own memories. According to the conservancy’s Howe, McDonald’s “ultimately saw the economic value and marketing value of the restored building.”

The McDonald’s vice president declined to discuss the earlier decision to close the restaurant and eventually dismantle it. At the January 1994 closing, McDonald’s officials cited earthquake damage and the lack of indoor seating and a drive-up window.

That set off a surprising range of protests, including pressure from Mayor Lawrence, Gov. Pete Wilson and labor unions that own large amounts of McDonald’s stock. The National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1994 declared the Downey McDonald’s “an authentic icon of contemporary American life” and one of the country’s 11 most endangered landmarks.

On Thursday, the hamburger stand remained boarded up. The paint was peeling in spots. Otherwise, it seemed in decent shape.

At Farr’s Stationers next door, customer Anthony Bermudez said he was eager for the reopening. “I used to come there for years and I don’t see why they shut it in the first place,” he said.