CURATOR SELLING COLFAX MUSEUM’S HISTORIC PIECES
Here’s what you can buy in the Colfax Museum’s $150,000 fire sale
Befitting its famously gritty namesake, The Colfax Museum has had a rough go of it in recent months.
Founded in 2004 by Elvis impersonator Jonny Barber, the museum opened to the public in 2017 to commemorate the lore and history of Colfax Avenue, the longest commercial street in the United States. Stretching from the Eastern Plains to the foothills, Colfax has hosted presidents and addicts, celebrities and prostitutes — occasionally in the same venue — at its hotels, bars, restaurants, clubs, theaters, retail shops and residences, Barber said.
However, it wasn’t long before Barber’s museum was gentrified out of its first Denver
location, the Ed Moore Flower Shop, due to rising rents. It now resides inside Pasternack’s Art Hub in the 40 West Arts District in Lakewood.
Barber said he can’t sustain the museum and is looking to sell his entire collection for $150,000. His hope is that it will be donated back to his nonprofit organization, “so these items can belong to all of us and remain on public display.”
“It’s proven its value, because tourists love it,” Barber said. “I curated a (Colfax history) show for DIA Concourse A that was a huge success, and I got correspondence from travelers all over the world. But someone just needs to underwrite it. We’ve had a couple of floods at the space here and I’ve extended myself past the point that makes any sense.”
Barber is proud of the otherwise well-maintained collection, which features not only signs and memorabilia from the hundreds of businesses that have lined Colfax Avenue, but also the street’s oft-forgotten namesake, Schuyler Colfax. He served as vice president under Ulysses S. Grant from 1869 to 1873. And that’s just the start. Here are 10 items from Barber’s collection that give a sense of its breadth and depth, with details provided by Barber. (Note: The Denver Post does not guarantee the authenticity of any of these items, but took steps to independently verify their history wherever possible.)
“When it’s Colfax, does it even really matter if it’s real or just another roadside attraction?” Barber said. “This is our story, our mythology, our urban legends.”
1. The Elvis plaque. This 150pound bronze plaque used to hang in the gymnasium that singer Elvis Presley helped build for the Denver Police Department, an organization with which Presley was an honorary captain prior to his death in 1977. It mentions an officer named Merle Nading, who was slain on East Colfax Avenue on Oct. 3, 1971. That prompted Presley, a friend and visitor to the department in his later days, to kick in the rest of the funds needed to build the gym (about $5,000, according to Colorado Public Radio). The gym itself was once located at 3555 N. Colorado Blvd. Today, it’s a Walgreens.
2. The backstage pass. When Noel Redding, bassist for the Jimi Hendrix Experience, arrived in Colorado in 1969 for the three-day Denver Pop Festival, he didn’t know it would mark that legendary trio’s final show. Promoted by the late, influential Barry Fey, the June 27-29 event at the old Mile High Stadium drew more than 50,000 people but was plagued with riots and tear gas, prompting Hendrix to announce from the stage he thought he was watching the start of World War III. Redding, understandably, couldn’t handle that — or the post-show rush of fans that almost crushed the band’s van — so he quit the next day, but not before signing his backstage pass (actually a button) with the message, “My last gig with the Experience, 1969.” Barber maintains a certificate of authenticity for the item that came from a collector, “Who got it from Noel Redding personally,” he said.
3. The dinosaur footprint.
Colfax’s first recorded visitors cruised the strip in prehistoric times, roughly 150 million years ago. Evidence of a massive, marching dinosaur called an Iguanodon was excavated after Highway 40 was designated in 1926. Using sections of the Smoky Hill Trail, Kansas City Trail and the Golden Road, the route passed through Aurora, Denver, Lakewood, Edgewater and Golden on its way to the Rocky Mountains. “I originally thought the carefully quarried dino print to be a stegosaurus,” Barber said. “But the grandfather of a visitor to the museum was among the men who dug out the road through Dinosaur Ridge. She confirmed it was actually an iguanodon, which are also native to the region.”
4. The blessed rosary. Barber said this rosary was blessed by Pope John Paul II when the pontiff spent the night on Colfax at the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception as part of his visit for World Youth Day in 1993. “Someone in New York heard that I was opening a Colfax Museum and sent it to me in the mail with a note reading, ‘You’re gonna need this!’ ” Barber’s only proof for the item is the word of the woman who mailed it to him. (She claims to have been there when the pope blessed it.) 5. Sid King’s Crazy Horse sign. One of Barber’s most visually impressive offerings is the combination mannequin and neon sign that used to hang over the door of Sid King’s Crazy Horse Bar. “Sid King was the Sultan of Striptease, and his club was certainly among the most famous places to ever call Colfax home,” Barber said. “Clint Eastwood films a scene with his orangutan Clyde (from “Every Which Way But Loose”) at the revolving bar, with Sid himself looking on at the action. Elvis Presley also was a known visitor.” While the club closed in 1983, Barber said the items are validated by historic photos, as well as by “someone who knew the guy who recovered the mannequin.”
6. The Aladdin Theatre. Colfax still boasts a number of wellknown theaters — the Bluebird and Ogden among them — but it used to have many more. One such was the Aladdin, at 2000 E. Colfax Ave., then known as the first motion-picture theater west of the Mississippi River to have “talkies.” Actor Al Jolson (“The Jazz Singer”) heard himself talk on-screen for the very first time there, and was subsequently convinced that sound was the future of movies. “The Aladdin was lavish and ornate,” Barber said. “Murals donned the walls (and) the decor gave the feel of being in the Taj Mahal.” While the theater was demolished in 1984 (and today is a Walgreen’s) Barber is proud to possess the center stone that hung over the front door, as well as pieces of the original marquee. He has photos from the demolition of the theater and eyewitness testimony to prove they’re real.
7. Jack Kerouac on Colfax.
Barber is proud to possess what he claims is the only picture of famed Beat poet Jack Kerouac on Colfax Avenue. “We have the original, folks!” he said, noting that the item was sent to the Kerouac and Neal Cassady estates for their assessments. Cassady’s estate has verified it, but Barber is still awaiting word from the Kerouac estate (who are “optimistic,” he added). “Plus, I found the photo in a first edition 1957 copy of ‘On The Road,’ which is also in the museum.” The black-and-white image, dated 1947, finds Kerouac reclined on a park bench at the corner of East Colfax Avenue and Grant Street. “You can see the Hotel Newhouse, the Immaculate Conception Cathedral, and some beautiful old cars in the shot,” Barber said. “Jack makes more than a casual mention of Colfax in ‘On The Road,’ and even used to live in an apartment at 1522 Lafayette St., just off East Colfax.”
8. Celebrity autographs. Autographs remain a niche but competitive realm of the collector’s world, and Barber is proud of any signed pictures that relate to the history of Colfax — including famous East High School graduates such as Don Cheadle and Pam Grier. “East High has produced a long list of luminaries, including the first African-American to ever win an Academy Award,” Hattie McDaniel (for 1939’s “Gone With the Wind”). Others include Ruth Handler, inventor of the Barbie doll; Antoinette Perry, namesake of the Tony Awards; members of Earth, Wind & Fire; and classic Hollywood actors Douglas Fairbanks and Harold Lloyd.
9. Smiley’s Art Deco light.
Barber likens this 3½-foot tall, 200-pound light fixture to a gothic, “Bruce Wayne manoresque” Art Deco sculpture. It formerly graced Smiley’s, which described itself as the world’s largest laundromat when it opened at East Colfax Avenue and Downing Street, taking over a building that was first built in 1932. “They spared no expense when putting this fixture together!” Barber said of the building and its original decor, which also incorporated elements of the Streamline Moderne style. 10. Hangar Bar’s beer-can bomber. Made entirely of beer cans, this novelty sculpture boasts an impressive 17-foot wingspan that formerly occupied East Colfax Avenue’s beloved (and recently shuttered) Hangar Bar, which first opened in 1938. No authentication needed.