Jonas Bros - Denver, CO
Posted by: 
Outspoken1
N 39° 43.967 W 104° 59.266
13S E 501048 N 4398099
Jonas Bros was one of the major furriers in Denver for over fifty years
Waymark Code: WM9X5P
Location: Colorado, United States
Date Posted: 10/09/2010
Views: 4
"The Jonas Brothers Furs Building features a late 1920s rooftop neon sign, once a common form of advertising in downtown Denver. The building itself is from 1923 and housed the taxidermy and fur store. Coloman Jonas did the taxidermy work for the Denver Museum of Natural History and the Denver Zoo. Since 2003, the building has been home to the Serengeti nightclub.
The Jonas brothers established a national reputation as taxidermists and furriers. Initially the company’s furrier trade was secondary to taxidermy, but after the 1940s private clients began to buy more furs than taxidermy services. The firm continued to do taxidermy work for museums for the entire time of its existence. Coloman Jonas, the eldest brother and co-founder of the firm, served for over twenty-five years on the board of trustees for the Denver Zoological Foundation and the Denver Museum of Natural History, advising the museum in the planning and fashioning of the spectacular displays of wildlife that make the Denver museum one of the world’s finest. The 1923 building is also important for its extremely rare surviving example of a late 1920s rooftop neon advertising sign. Rooftop advertising signs, both incandescent and neon illuminated, once formed a familiar part of Denver’s downtown landscape. Changes in marketing philosophies and increasingly prohibitive sign codes hastened the demise of this form of outdoor advertising. The Jonas Brothers Furs sign is the oldest known surviving illuminated rooftop sign in downtown Denver." (from (
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The building is now occupied by the Serengeti Nightclub. Review from 2004 (
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This advertisement reminds us of how popular furs were in the 1940s. Since Jonas Bros was not located in downtown Denver, the advertisement offers to pay the customer's Yellow Cab fare to the store.