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The first McDonald's franchise

400 North Lee Street, Des Plaines · Des Plaines, Illinois, United States · 1955-04-15

The first McDonald's franchise
Mr. Blue MauMau from USA via Wikimedia Commons (Location of McDonald's brothers' first franchise (3411509851) · CC BY 2.0

Ray Kroc opened his first store on the San Bernardino brothers' system; the building was later rebuilt as a museum and demolished in 2018.

The record

Date1955-04-15
Place400 North Lee Street, Des Plaines, Des Plaines, Illinois, United States
Coordinates42.035, -87.888 (landmark-level precision)
ScopeWorld-historic
SourcesWikipedia
Added2026-08-14 · source: editors
Go deeper. This page records the place, the date and what is tied to them — the full story is told better elsewhere: Wikipedia. What you will not find there is this location’s other time layers, the map, and the memories readers add below.

Coordinates are given at landmark level. A landmark-level coordinate points at the structure; a city-level one points at the settlement, not at a parcel.

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Footage

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Time layers at this place

One place, several moments in time. This location has 2 recorded time layers between 1954 and 1955 — slide through them:

1954
McDonald's #1 Store Museum
1955
The first McDonald's franchise

Seeded by the editors. This entry was compiled by us from public reference works and is labelled as such, not presented as a reader’s contribution. Sources are listed on the entry. If you know more, or we have it wrong, tell us — corrections are published.

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