AMA Donuts doesn’t look like much: a low-slung, glass-fronted building behind a large, faded sign in a cracked, crumbling asphalt lot.
But look more closely. The sign, painted red and yellow, may call up buried memories. The building’s roof and facade are tilted. The tile is red and white. At each end of the building is, cut off at the roofline, a partial arch.
This modest donut shop, at 1057 E. Mission Blvd. in Pomona, was one of the earliest McDonald’s, built before Ray Kroc bought the small chain and took it global.
Founders Dick and Maurice “Mac” McDonald created the concept in San Bernardino: a walk-up stand that sold hamburgers, cheeseburgers, fries and malts, all made at lightning speed in an assembly-line process.
Opened Dec. 22, 1948, the 1396 N. E St. McDonald’s became a sensation. In 1953, the McDonald brothers rebuilt the stand in their new “Golden Arches” design, a neon yellow arch on each side, and offered franchising opportunities.
In order, McDonald’s opened in Phoenix, Downey, North Hollywood, Alhambra, Sacramento, Pomona and Azusa. Pomona’s opened on Sept. 3, 1954. Azusa’s, the eighth in the chain, followed two weeks later.
Kroc got involved in 1955 as franchise agent before buying out the brothers in 1961. McDonald’s now has more than 45,000 restaurants all over the world.
“We’ve got No. 7,” Geoff Starns, Pomona City Hall’s planning manager, said with satisfaction.
“And,” boasts Mike Schowalter, president of the Historical Society of the Pomona Valley, “it’s the second-oldest standing today.”
A half-dozen of us — but not Grimace or the Hamburglar — convened at AMA Donuts in late April to discuss this exceedingly humble building that may become the city’s next historic landmark.
Mayor Tim Sandoval joined us at my invitation. Before we went inside, Sandoval joked that he was going to order “a Quarter Pounder with Cheese between two donuts.” He settled for a maple bar and a container of milk.
At least we had Mayor McCheese!
Pomona’s Historic Preservation Commission had voted unanimously on April 1 to recommend protection of the building. The City Council is scheduled to take up the designation on Monday, May 18.
Status as a city landmark would mean that if the owner wanted to alter or demolish the building, the City Council would have to agree that the benefits outweighed the cultural loss, Starns explained to our group, which occupied two canary yellow booths.
Carlos Molina, an associate city planner, had researched the building’s history and context. He connected the 1954 building to other restaurant chains with early buildings still in existence around town: two former Arby’s, a former Taco Bell and a Wienerschnitzel, still operating out of a red and yellow A-frame.
I brought up an early 1960s Denny’s that’s now a La Michoacana ice cream shop.
Starns said those are among 10 Googie-era roadside architecture survivors. They made it this long due not to civic farsightedness but to neglect.
When the 10 and 60 freeways opened, traffic on former main drags Mission Boulevard and Holt Avenue dropped dramatically. The city also declined economically. Investment dried up.
“All these unique buildings got frozen in time. It was cheaper to reuse them,” Schowalter said. “It was that reuse that saved them.”
The last member of our cruller crew was Chris Nichols.
An advocate for Midcentury Modern architecture, Nichols grew up in Azusa walking past its decaying 1954 McDonald’s, then abandoned, later demolished, on his way to high school. “I was fascinated that such a futuristic building could be in ruins,” he recalled.
Nichols and I have been talking about the Pomona McDonald’s since 2004, when I wrote about the building’s claim to fame in time for its 50th anniversary. Where does the time go?
At AMA, I asked him about the environment in which the early franchises operated, as Molina and I both jotted notes.
The McDonald brothers, Nichols explained, would sell operators a set of blueprints and a manual outlining their “Speedee Service System.”
“In the early ’50s, fast food was booming. If you were on the ball, you could see that this was the next big thing,” Nichols said.
When Kroc took over the company, the locations franchised by the brothers were ignored by the corporation, Nichols said.
Of the eight pre-Kroc McDonald’s, six were eventually demolished, all but Downey and Pomona.
Downey’s was due to be razed in the early 1990s, but a public pressure campaign, in which Nichols was involved, succeeded. McDonald’s embraced the building and restored it as an homage to the original, with walk-up service and outdoor dining.
Tourists visit it for a taste of an icon of America. Meanwhile, in Pomona, the building has survived under the radar.
In 1968, when McDonald’s closed, the arches were chopped off at the roofline and the sign altered to remove the McDonald’s branding. But its origins are hiding in plain sight.
Nichols walked us around, pointing out original and altered features. Some of the windows are still canted. The exterior counter where people would walk up and order burgers, fries and shakes — at different windows — remains.
Nichols approached the freestanding sign.
“This may be the only sign of its type that still exists,” Nichols said. And, he said, “the fact that they painted it red and yellow makes it recognizable.”
So does the other signature feature.
“Amazingly,” Nichols marveled, “this store kept the bottom part of the arches.”
Last year the property owner applied to the Planning Department for a determination of the building’s historic significance. “They want to sell it. That’s all they’ve told us,” Starns said.
“Could McDonald’s buy it and reopen it?” Schowalter asked.
“The owner told us he reached out to McDonald’s,” Starns replied, “and the answer was a flat-out no.”
It’s a challenging part of town. A shopping cart was parked by the sign. A homeless person was lying down near one of the arches.
AMA Donuts operators Carlos Samayo and Maria Urias are aware of the history. Architecture students at Cal Poly Pomona have taken photos of the building, explaining that it was an early McDonald’s, Samayo said in Spanish.
The shop opened in 1986: 40 years ago.
Said Starns: “It’s been AMA Donuts longer than it was a McDonald’s.”
David Allen writes Friday, Sunday and Wednesday, archly. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, and follow davidallencolumnist on Facebook or Instagram, @davidallen909 on X or @davidallen909.bsky.social on Bluesky.