Davis & Shaw Furniture Company: Denver’s 20th Century Furniture Store

Comments

It's funny to see Davis and Shaw advertising itself as a low-cost furniture store back in the day. From what I remember, the '70s until its closure in 2005, Davis and Shaw sold high-quality furniture--at not particularly economical prices. It was a good store with good merchandise if you had a good amount of money to invest in furniture that would last a long time.

Thanks for commenting, Jude. It's always interesting to see how businesses evolve over time.

I well remember walking by the Champa St store while in grade school at St Elizabeth on what is now the Auraria campus. (The church with its dark gray steeple still holds services!)

What a great memory, Leta. Thanks for sharing!

In the 1970's, going into a high-end furniture store was a rare event for us, but at Davis and Shaw, we felt special! We purchased a sofa and love seat in bown wide-whale corduroy--they were traditional, yet perfect on our shag rug, with our moss-rock fireplace and rough sawn cedar paneling. We were in post-hippie heaven! After ten years, we changed decor, and could never find any in the scale or quality of these, so we had them completely re-upholstered and styled with different legs. Everyone loved sittining on them, and when we tired of (emgarrassing to admit) the Southwestern style, our college-aged kids, took them to college. They never needed structural change, nor even different filling and were so soft and comfortable. Later, we purchased Crate and Barrel down-filled sofas, which never held up and looked very sad unless you shook the cushions daily. We returned them. I wish I had my old Davis and Shaw sofas to this day---they were timeless.

Thanks for sharing, Sandy! Quality was definitely a major selling point of Davis & Shaw in the 1970s.

I have a chest of drawers which belonged to my grandparents. It has a sticker in it that says Fred Davis Furniture Denver. It is such a solid piece of furniture. I am so lucky that my grandfather gave it to me. It was one of the first pieces of furniture my grandparents bought when they got married.

What a nice memory and a solid piece of furniture to go with it. Thanks for sharing your story, Dee!

When my family visited the store in 1948, we were told that the carpet selection was the largest west of Chicago,
Richard Pate, Sr. wrote a short history of the store

Thanks for sharing your memory and the Richard Pate book, Robert!

Add new comment

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.