On Wed, 17 Jun 1998, Ken Follett wrote:

> That sounds like a very interesting problem, adaptive re-use of a McDonalds
> into a Chinese restaurant. The Golden Sesame Noodle?

This building doesn't look like any McDonald's you've ever seen.  It's a
brown-brick gabled building with front courtyard garden, specifically
designed for the site by a leading architectural firm, and was even meant
to evoke somewhat the historic house that was destroyed for its
construction.  It was an early manifestation of Postmodern.

I believe it was the first time that McDonald's had tolerated any
deviation from their standard design.

The Chinese restaurant proposal is to completely transform the building,
including filling in the front courtyard and so on.

At the meeting where we reviewed (and approved) this, we admitted to each
other that this 1973 McDonald's might have been recognized as a
significant historic building if it had survived another 20 years or so.
In the absence of assigning any significance to the existing building, we
reviewed it as an alteration to a noncontributing structure in a historic
district.

                               Larry Kestenbaum