By Nathaniel Meyersohn
For decades, bright, playful and oddly-shaped fast-food restaurants dotted the roadside along America’s highways.
You’d drive by Howard Johnson’s with its orange roofs and then pass Pizza Hut’s red-topped huts. A few more miles and there was the roadside White Castle with its turrets. Arby’s roof was shaped like a wagon and Denny’s resembled a boomerang. And then McDonald’s, with its neon golden arches towering above its restaurants.
These quirky designs were an early form of brand advertising, gimmicks meant to grab drivers’ attention and get them to stop in.
As fast-food chains spread across the US after World War II, new roadside restaurant brands needed to stand out. Television was new media not yet beamed into every single home, newspapers were still ascendant and social media unimaginable.
So restaurant chains turned to architecture as a key tool to promote their brand and help create their corporate identity.
But the fast-food architecture of today has lost its quirky charm and distinctive features. Shifts in the restaurant industry, advertising and technology have made fast-food exteriors bland and spiritless, critics say.
Goodbye bright colors and unusual shapes. Today, the design is minimal and sleek. Most fast-food restaurants are built to maximize efficiency, not catch motorists’ attention. Many are shaped like boxes, decorated with fake wooden paneling, imitation stone or brick exteriors, and flat roofs. One critic has called this trend “faux five-star restaurants” intended to make customers forget they are eating greasy fries and burgers.
The chains now sport nearly identical looks. Call it the gentrification of fast-food design.
“They’re soulless little boxes,” said Glen Coben, an architect who has designed boutique hotels, restaurants and stores. “They’re like Monopoly homes.”
Googie architecture
Fast-food restaurants developed and expanded in the mid-twentieth century with the explosion…
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