National and State Register

Jonas Brothers Furs Building

Denver County

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. 

A black and white photo of the building with the sign on the top of a sloped roof on the left and buildings terraced on the side.

Jonas Brothers Furs Building

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.