[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 29 (Wednesday, March 16, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: March 16, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
               ENDANGERED SPECIES: ORIGINAL GOLDEN ARCHES

                                 ______


                           HON. STEPHEN HORN

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, March 16, 1994

  Mr. HORN. Mr. Speaker, this week, two national newspapers, the New 
York Times and USA Today, drew attention to a fight being waged between 
preservationists and corporate beancounters over the fate of a national 
icon, the oldest, original still-standing McDonald's restaurant.
  That restaurant is located in Downey, CA, and community leaders have 
joined with the Los Angeles Conservancy and others committed to 
preserving historic southern California landmarks in the fight against 
corporate executives who ignore historic significance in their 
commitment to the bottom line. Downey residents, led by City 
Councilwoman Joyce Lawrence, have fought a good fight and have 
marshaled strong arguments for preserving this historic landmark.
  USA Today, in a March 8 editorial, captured the reason why the people 
of Downey want to save the 41-year-old building: ``McDonald's didn't 
invent the drive-in burger joint, but it can take a lot of credit. 
Nothing ever captured the on-the-run vigor of mid-50's America so 
completely as Speedee McDonald, the chain's first mascot, and the 
golden arches for which he stood.''
  The editorial concludes, ``Is it justice that the Downey drive-in 
should fall victim to the same culture of impatience that gave it life? 
More likely, it's just compounding the error.''
  Unfortunately, the McDonald's officials who have been trying to close 
this historic site may have been aided in this unsentimental effort by 
the January Northridge earthquake, which caused mild damage. They 
argue, says B. Drummond Ayres, Jr., in his March 6 New York Times 
article, ``Endangered Species: Original Golden Arches,'' that the 
restaurant, which has been closed since the earthquake, cannot be 
brought up to current McDonald's standards without destroying the 
structural details the preservationists want to save.
  The preservationists are continuing their fight to save this spot, 
where, it is said, Ray Kroc, then a milkshake-machine salesman, was 
first impressed with the fast-food approach of the McDonald brothers 
which he turned into a worldwide phenomenon. The article and editorial 
about the fight follow.

                [From the New York Times, Mar. 6, 1994]

               Endangered Species: Original Golden Arches

                      (By B. Drummond Ayres, Jr.)

       Downey, CA, March 5.--Just about every town has a 
     McDonald's. But Downey has the oldest, original still-
     standing McDonald's, built way back in 1953, the year 
     Southern California gave birth to the fast-food chain that 
     conquered the globe.
       It is one totally awesome relic. There isn't a faux mansard 
     roof shingle or earth-tone brick in sight. This is the eye-
     popping original, with the bright yellow parabolic arches 
     piercing a raked roof, a gleaming facade of red and white 
     tile, flashing neon trim, walk-up windows, lots of chrome, no 
     inside seating.
       Just looking at it brings back memories of sharing 15-cent 
     burgers and 10-cent fries with a date, while the Dynatone 
     mufflers rumble and Bill Haley and his Comets are rocking out 
     of the little speaker in the dash.
       Give me a quarter-pounder with . . .
       Sorry. Closed, See you later, alligator.
       The building was mildly damaged in the earthquake in 
     January. A few cracks were found, and McDonald's shut it 
     down. For good, the company says.


                           Appeal to Clinton

       But preservationists are fighting to save it with 
     ``McDemonstrations'' and even an appeal to the nation's No. 1 
     junk-food consumer, President Clinton.
       They say the issue here is much bigger than burgers and 
     nostalgia. It is nothing less than the rescue of an 
     architectural icon whose impact has been felt beyond Downey, 
     a sunny middle-class suburb of workers in the aerospace and 
     military industries that lies a 30-minute freeway ride south 
     of downtown Los Angeles.
       Architectual icon?
       ``Junk food can be history,'' said Christopher Nichols, a 
     member of the Los Angeles Conservancy, a nonprofit group 
     dedicated to preserving historic Southern California 
     landmarks.
       In the Angeleno mind-construct, that does not stop with 
     saving old Spanish adobe.
       Thus far, the McDonald's Corporation, which has phased out 
     the golden arches for the mansard look, has refused to 
     reconsider. It says the restaurant was cracked a little by 
     the quake, is outdated and cannot be brought up to current 
     McDonald's standards without destroying the very structural 
     details the preservationists want to save.
       ``We have closed the restaurant and we will not reopen 
     it,'' said Kevin Mazzu, McDonald's marketing manager for the 
     Los Angeles region. ``We plan to build a new restaurant 
     elsewhere in the city in which we'll incorporate important 
     parts of the old building, something we've done in other 
     places.''
       Mr. Nichols said it would be architectural heresy to move a 
     single nail of the 41-year-old structure in the heart of 
     Downey, at the busy intersection of Florence Avenue and 
     Lakewood Boulevard.


                            piece of history

       He noted that because the 1953 Downey McDonald's was the 
     oldest surviving restaurant in the worldwide chain and, 
     equally important, had never been moved or architecturally 
     modified because of a quirk in its franchise arrangement with 
     the parent corporation, the National Register of Historical 
     Places had ruled that it could be placed on the register, 
     providing the building's owner requested a listing.
       That has yet to happen. Nor is it likely, since the parent 
     corporation took over the franchise in 1990.
       Mr. Nichols and other members of the Conservancy see the 
     final disposition of the Downey McDonald's as a major test of 
     a major corporation's sense of civic responsibility.
       They argue that McDonald's should join, other big companies 
     around the country that are beginning to preserve important, 
     historic corporate memorabilia. They make the point that 
     General Motors has put together an archive of its company 
     papers and records, that Procter & Gamble has carefully 
     preserved a collection of Hollywood makeup it acquired when 
     it took over Max Factor and that Woolworth and First Citizens 
     Bank of Raleigh, N.C., are helping to establish a museum in 
     Greensboro, N.C., for the whites-only Woolworth lunch counter 
     that was the stage for the 1960 civil rights sit-in.


                         preservation examples

       ``McDonald's should take a lesson from those kinds of 
     companies,'' said Pete Moruzzi, another member of the 
     Conservancy, which has helped save the 1939 Spanish-style 
     Union Station in downtown Los Angeles, the city's 1928 art 
     deco Bullock department store on Wilshire Boulevard and many 
     of its rambling, turn-of-the century bungalows.
       Mr. Moruzzi, who has organized at least one McDemonstration 
     in front of the restaurant, contends that the January 
     earthquake did no significant damage to the structure, 
     certainly not enough to merit its closing.
       ``They were just looking for an excuse to shut it,'' he 
     said. ``They've been talking about closing it for a long 
     time, saying it's tired and outdated. They think they can 
     make more money out of one of those new places. Worse, there 
     isn't a law on the books that we can invoke to stop the 
     destruction of the restaurant if it comes to that. All we can 
     do is appeal to their sense of civic duty.''
       McDonald's answers that while it is a profit-driven 
     enterprise--it will not release its books on the Downey 
     McDonald's--it has a proven record of corporate civic 
     responsibility.
       Company officials point out that the corporation long ago 
     set up a McDonald's museum in Des Plaines, Ill., in a 
     reconstructed 1955 McDonald's.


                           striking a balance

       As for Downey dispute, the officials say they have to 
     balance preservation with economics. They profess to be 
     unimpressed by a letter campaign and McDemonstrations and 
     unconcerned that at least one preservationist has written the 
     White House. ``Your work to preserve this landmark is 
     admirable,'' a Clinton aide wrote back.
       Why not spruce up the old building and advertise it as one 
     of the attractions of the town where the singer Karen 
     Carpenter grew up, the surfing novelty song ``Wipe Out!'' was 
     recorded and the Apollo moon capsule was built?
       ``It has no inside seating, no drive-through, things like 
     that,'' Mr. Mazzu replied. ``Without them, and putting them 
     in would change things, we feel we can't offer our patrons 
     the kind of service they've come to expect.''
       The Downey restaurant was the third in the initial batch of 
     a dozen or so McDonald's outlets to go up, with each outlet 
     built using the same set of plans. The first two restaurants 
     were closed and replaced years ago, but the restaurant here, 
     because of the way the franchise was worded, did not come 
     under full corporate control until 1990.


                         the way americans eat

       According to preservationists, it was at the Downey 
     restaurant that Ray Kroc, a milkshake-machine salesman, 
     became fascinated by the innovative fast-food assembly line 
     created by two brothers named McDonald, an assembly line that 
     eventually changed the way Americans eat. He was so impressed 
     that he went into business with them and eventually bought 
     them out.
       The preservationists argue that another important reason 
     the Downey restaurant should be saved is that the gaudy, 
     exuberant design of the first McDonald's outlets set the 
     style and tone for an architectural revolution in the 1950's 
     and 1960's. As the preservationists see it, that revolution, 
     for better or for worse, radically altered the previously 
     mundane look of commercial America.
       This was particularly true, they say, for the commercial 
     highway strips and shopping centers that sprang up in the 
     postwar years to service a nation suddenly having a torrid 
     love affair with the automobile and suburban living.
       ``It was architecture that caught the spirit of a country 
     coming off a great depression and a great war, and the Golden 
     Arches were in the vangard,'' said Alan Hess, a prominent 
     California architectural critic who has written extensively 
     on roadside strips and McDonald's.


                            roadside culture

       ``McDonald's was specifically conceived to be part of the 
     new roadside culture,'' he continued. ``The soaring, bright 
     arches were meant to get a driver's attention. And they did, 
     because besides being big and bright they also were bold, 
     modern, forward-looking, high-tech, energetic, exuberant, 
     optimistic--all the things we were back then.''
       Though the old Downey McDonald's is closed and the fight 
     goes on to get it reopened, for those who can't wait, relief 
     from a Big Mac attack is just down the road a bit, where 
     stands one of those mansard McDonald's.
       ``I go there sometimes but it's just not the same,'' said 
     Jerry Mull, a 47-year-old engineer who spent a good part of 
     his youth hanging at the old place in his DelRay Club Coupe.
       ``The food tastes the same but it's not the same,'' he 
     lamented. ``It's not my kind of place. It's their kind of 
     place.
                                  ____


                     [From USA Today, Mar. 8, 1994]

                              Arch Support

       McDonald's didn't invent the drive-in burger joint, but it 
     can take a lot of credit. Nothing ever captured the on-the-
     run vigor of mid-`50s America so completely as Speedee 
     McDonald, the chain's first mascot, and the golden arches for 
     which he stood.
       Alas, Speedee's heirs aren't softies. The company has made 
     the woeful decision to tear down the oldest McDonald's still 
     standing--a rake-roofed, yellow-arched, red-and-white tiled 
     beauty in Downey, Calif. The building is too small for modern 
     equipment, does not have indoor seating and--according to 
     unconfirmed but believable reports--loses $50,000 a year.
       That last item violates another McDonald's tradition--black 
     ink. In 1955, total sales were less than $250,000. Ten years 
     later, sales were $250,000 per restaurant, of which there 
     were about 700. In 1993, sales were $23 billion in 13,900 
     outlets.
       McDonald's is in it for the money, not the memories, and 
     that's fair enough. Jettisoning the old was as much as part 
     of the '50s as eye-catching drive-in architecture. And in its 
     defense, McDonald's does indeed have some sense of historical 
     obligation. It has reconstructed another old drive-in as a 
     museum in Illinois, and parts of the Downey drive-in will be 
     incorporated in a new, '50s-style restaurant in that city.
       But reconstructing history isn't the same as preserving it. 
     Nor as desirable.
       Early drive-ins heralded a vast out-of-house migration, 
     during which the nation issued itself a license to discard 
     old and inefficient things. In that way, McDonald's oldest 
     extant drive-in has genuine historical and cultural value.
       Moreover, a memorial to fast food's roots fits best in 
     southern California, where the drive-in phenomenon was 
     embraced first and most enthusiastically. For these reasons, 
     McDonald's should try again to preserve the Downey drive-in 
     in its original, operating condition.
       Is it justice that Downey drive-in should fall victim to 
     the same culture of impatience that gave it life? More 
     likely, it's just compounding the error.

                          ____________________