Photo Essay: The Oldest Golden Arches, 65 Years Later

I haven't been able to verify this (at least not on the internet), but I've got an early memory of the "Golden Arches" in my hometown of Syracuse, New York.

In my memory, they were on the corner of James Street and Thompson Road, very near the border of the neighborhood of Eastwood and the suburb of East Syracuse.

Only, I don't remember those Golden Arches belonging to a McDonald's. I remember them attached to a Sears gas station.

I was confused why someone would get gas at a burger stand and why a gas station was named after a department store. But then again, there were a lot of things that confused me in my childhood.

And memories have a funny way of playing tricks on rational thought.

That was sometime between 1975 (the year of my birth) and 1986, the year that the two arches were replaced by a pair of pigtails. The Wendy's franchise still operates there today.

Those were the only Golden Arches of my childhood that I can recall. And I really don't remember ever seeing any again, until a car service drove me past the Rock n' Roll McDonald's in Chicago sometime around the millennium.

In all the times I went to Chicago for work, I always drove past. I never got to go in.

And now, the most famous McDonald's in the world has been demolished.



But luckily, my life isn't bereft of those arches, now that I live in California.



Because the oldest standing and operating McDonald's is right here in Downey, just 11 miles south of Downtown LA.



And it has been the nexus of pop culture, roadside architecture, neon, and car culture for the last 65 years, since it first opened on August 18, 1953.



The Downey location wasn't the first of the McDonald's locations—that distinction belongs to San Bernardino, on the same lot where the unofficial McDonald's museum now stands.



That one (from 1948) didn't have any arches of gold. Those came later. And while the first McDonald's was known for its speedy service, its "Speedee" mascot hadn't been fully developed yet.



It all came together, though, by the time that the third McDonald's location was built in Downey, franchised by Roger Williams and "Bud" Landon.



Two years later, when entrepreneur Ray Kroc bought the McDonald brothers out of the business and founded McDonald's Corporation, these first locations weren't included in the newly-formed entity—and the Downey one wouldn't be until 1990.



So, in many ways, McDonald's #3 in Downey has been allowed to operate somewhat as an exception to the evolution of the fast food chain.



In fact, it's largely unchanged from its origins—which certainly helped in getting it later designated as a landmark and saving it from demolition.



Since 1996, this McDonald's has featured a museum and gift shop, which occupy the former counter service booth and the restroom area.



Most of the artifacts are hidden behind the original doors from the first "Hamburger University," located in Elk Grove Village, Illinois.



Ray Kroc was an unforgiving taskmaster who didn't allow the franchisees to stray from the McDonald's brand promise (despite the attempts by some to sell other items like tacos and such).



But he never would have taken over the company (or, it seems, have pulled it out from under the McDonald's brothers) if he hadn't been selling multimixer shake machines and received an order for a whopping five of them—all for one restaurant, the San Bernardino McDonald's.



The rest, as they say, is history.



The character of Ronald McDonald not only replaced Speedee as the burger chain's mascot in 1962...



...but he essentially eclipsed the memory of there ever being any other mascot besides him.



I've found myself drawn to these Golden Arches of Downey ever since I first visited them on the night of May 14, 2011. It was my first time in Downey, and I'd moved to California just about three months prior.



Of course, more than seven years later, it's now hit the big 6-5 ad is still growing strong...



...and the corporation has sold billions of burgers, not just 500 million.



It's still a beacon, be it day or night.



It's a prime example of the beginnings of an American tradition.



And it's one of the last of a quickly dying breed.



McDonald's #2 opened in Phoenix in 1953 and was the oldest continually operated McDonald's in the world until its closure in 1986. It was razed and replaced by an Arby's, built on the site. Now it's a Yoshi's Japanese fast-food drive-thru.

The Des Plaines, Illinois franchise—the 9th one built, in 1955—was demolished in 1984 and, the following year, replaced by a replica that operated just as a museum. It didn't serve any burgers or fries.

Sadly, McD's corporate announced the replica's imminent demolition last year and began dismantling it earlier this year.

But in Downey, it's still like it's 1953—and for someone like me who feels like they were born in the wrong decade (or, more accurately, born too late), that's a welcome time warp.

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Photo Essay: A California Country Home In a Long-Lost Orange Grove

It's funny how pretty much anyplace you go in Southern California—particularly in the greater LA area—ends up being a goldmine of history.

And sometimes it takes a while after visiting for me to really understand the importance of a place.

Sometimes, even when I think I've got it figured out, I end up changing my mind after my second, third, fourth, or other subsequent visits.

Take Downey, for instance.

I'd first visited the southeast suburb of LA more than six years ago—having remarked that it was home to not only the oldest standing McDonald's but also Bob's Big Boy Broiler (formerly Harvey's and Johnie's), a sibling location to the one in Burbank I'd become obsessed with back in 2006.

I thought it was a roadfood metropolis, and nothing more.

At the time, I had no idea about the rural beginnings of Downey—something I didn't find out about until just two years ago.

Yet it's only now that the story of La Casa de Parley Johnson in Downey has started to make sense to me.



In Downey, this so-called "California country home" was once home to a prominent local citrus farmer from Riverside, Alexander "Parley" Johnson, whose family was heavily involved in the development of the Valencia orange. At that time, ranching was synonymous with business and profitability.



Johnson's widow Gypsy lived in the house until her death in 1986—and it's been preserved thanks in part to the stewardship of the Downey chapter of the Assistance League. Gypsy had bequeathed the house to the all-female non-profit community service organization, of which many of her friends had been members.



The 6,000-square-foot residence of reinforced gunite (a concrete aggregate) was built for the wealthy citrus grower and his wife between 1924 and 1926, when it was surrounded by 50 acres of orange groves—most of which were eventually sold off for commercial and residential development in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. What remains now is about an acre and a half.



The "country house" itself—which is more like a Spanish hacienda—was designed by architect Roland E. Coate, known for his expression of the "Monterey" architectural style (a subset of Spanish Colonial Revival) in the many residences he built throughout the Southland. Many of them were occupied by members of the Hollywood elite like Howard Hughes, Barbara Stanwyck, and David O. Selznick.



One of Coate's best-known public structures is the headquarters of the Automobile Club in the West Adams neighborhood of Los Angeles. Johnson's uncle, Frederick Orson Johnson, served two terms on the club's board of directors. (There's some debate as to whether Parley Johnson himself was or was not a founding member of the Club.)



Surrounding the hacienda are a formal lawn as well as a walled garden area by Florence Yoch—a landscape designer for Hollywood movie sets, as well as for Rancho Los Alamitos in Long Beach. She was joined in her landscape architectural business ventures by her partner in business, life, and love for 43 years, Lucille Council.



The pergola is no longer festooned with crawling vines, and the fountain in the forecourt is no longer enshrouded in potted succulents.



As you stand in the courtyard on the patio, you can still look up at the exquisite wooden balcony, behind while you'll find the master bedroom, two bathrooms, two dressing rooms, and a sitting alcove on the upper level.



Before WWII, ranching wasn't just a business—it was good business. And Parley Johnson, like many other successful ranchers and "growers" of the era, was pretty well-to-do.



At the house (now christened "La Casa de Parley Johnson"), he and his wife provided accommodations for both a live-in chauffeur and a maid.



Gypsy herself was an avid gardener and a member of the Los Angeles Garden Club...

...and was largely responsible for creating such an environment of idyllic Southern California living.



The interior and exterior are covered in nature-inspired and floral-patterned decorative tile, a different design in every room.



That includes a water basin (possibly used as a "flower sink") in the outdoor dining area.



According to local "Tile Man" Brian Kaiser, the tile at Casa de Parley Johnson is by-and-large of Mexican origin—which was actually uncommon at the time, in part because California tile was so geographically close and of such high quality (sometimes referred to as "everlasting").



How can you tell? Well, look for the telltale trio of chips from three little balls (a.k.a. tres pies, or three little feet) that separated layers of tiles while the wet glaze was being fired in the kiln.

It's an ancient Persian ceramic glazing technique found only in two places in the world, at least during the 1920s: the capital city of Tunisia, Tunis, and the Spanish colonial city of Puebla in Mexico.

And it's a good way to differentiate between cities of origin and between different potters' work.

But how did Islamic art find its way "south of the border"?

We can only guess that the Moors must've brought the knowledge to Spain when they conquered the Iberian Peninsula and that, centuries later, the Spanish conquistadors must've shared the technique after they landed in Mexico.

But only half the tiles at Casa de Parley Johnson actually have those chips. The rest are sometimes rumored to be Malibu Tile, but it's more likely that they're also Mexican—just not from Puebla.

And so yet another mystery of Southern California begins to unfurl.

For more on Casa de Parley Johnson, visit my friends at Esotouric who brought me there on one of their bus tours and who provided extensive information in their "You Can't Eat the Sunshine" podcast.

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Memorializing Disasters in Space Flight

For anyone born around 1975, the Challenger disaster was a big deal. We remember it—being shown the footage in school—the way that my mother must remember watching the JFK assassination on TV.

It seemed incomprehensible.

It was a time when young schoolgirls idolized the first [Ed: American] woman in Space, Sally Ride.

Three years later, Christa McAuliffe was to follow in her space boots. But on January 28, 1986—midway through my fifth-grade year—the Challenger exploded and broke apart into two pieces just 73 seconds after launch. All seven crew members died.

That was 32 years ago. I was 10.

But there's another space shuttle disaster that, in terms of human death toll, was just as bad, just 15 years ago: the Columbia, which disintegrated upon reentry after its mission  STS-107 on February 1, 2003.

It also killed all seven of its crew members.

The image of the Challenger becoming obliterated into two puffs of smoke is an image I wish I could forget, like the cloud coming out of the side of one of the World Trade Center towers. But in 2003, I was long out of school. I was knee-deep in my life working in the music industry in New York City. To be honest, I don't really remember the Columbia disaster happening.



Fortunately, both orbitors are memorialized at the Columbia Memorial Space Center, built upon the former site of the NASA Industrial Plant in Downey, CA.



Marked at the entrance by Apollo Boiler Plate 12’s command module...
...


...the Columbia Memorial Space Center is a hands-on space museum with interactive displays like robotic arms, a gravity well, a shuttle simulator, robotics lab, rocket launcher, and of course an astronaut suit photo opp.



There's also the Challenger Learning Center, where you can simulate a return to the moon...



...or a voyage to Mars.



It seems fitting that this living tribute to the crew of the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia disaster be located on the site where the space shuttles were actually built...



...at the former Vultee Aircraft Plant (circa mid-1930s), later known as Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation (Convair) and, in response to President Kennedy's proclamation that launched the "space race," the Resident Apollo Spacecraft Office (RASPO).



Unfortunately, much of that original manufacturing and assembly complex responsible for the space shuttles that ended in disaster—known as North American Aviation—has been razed, paved over, and converted into a strip mall.



In fact, in one of the only remaining buildings, there's a T-Mobile store, though the inside has been gutted.



That's just around the bend from—and technically part of the same structure as—the Vultee Aircraft Company rotunda entrance at 12214 Lakewood Boulevard, designed by architect Gordon B. Kaufmann.



It's currently unoccupied, though presumably it's been spared the bulldozer.



This campus once housed over 300 astronauts, government contractors, and support personnel during the peak of the Apollo program...



...but at the peak of the plant (circa the mid-1960s), it actually was home to 35,000 workers.



From 1972 to 1985, a total of six vessels for "space transportation" (a.k.a. reusable spacecraft, which was a new thing) came out of the Downey plant: the Enterprise, the Columbia, the Challenger, the Discovery, the Atlantis, and the Endeavor.



But even before the Columbia disaster—widely attributed to a problem with a piece of foam that came flying off, a problem that NASA had known about for quite some time—the aerospace and defense business at the Downey plant was purchased by Boeing in 1996.



It subsequently continued on a smaller scale, until NASA relocated the remaining activities relocated to other sites and the NASA site was closed in 1999.



By then, the Columbia had been successfully accomplishing a variety of space missions for nearly two decades—including the very first flight of the space shuttle program in 1981.

But upon the near-completion of its 28th mission, when it disastrously killed all seven of its crew members in 2003, NASA suspended space shuttle flights while it investigated the accident over the course of two years.

It had been the Space Shuttle program's 113th flight.

And ultimately, the spacecraft that kicked off the Space Shuttle program essentially ended it, directly leading to the retirement of the entire fleet in 2011.

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