When Matuszewicz looks at the historic sign in Aurora, he sees a soft blue glow that spells out “Riviera” in a flowing script with the word “Motel” in blue block letters below. An orange triangle resembling an airplane wing juts upward, punctuating “Riviera” and offering space-age vibes to those who drive by. The sign, he said, is unique because of the man who designed it, its construction from larger glass tubes that create a bigger glow, and the history it — and the Riviera — represent in metro Denver.

It’s hard for Matuszewicz, an old neon tube bender with a newly minted master’s degree in historic preservation, to pick a favorite. But the Riviera just might be it.

When the preservationist describes his love of neon signs, he speaks of the cosmos. Neon, he said, provides warmth to the people who observe it.

“When we hold a neon tube in our hands or see a neon sign, we are seeing our cosmic selves illuminated,” Matuszewicz said. “Nothing in the world does that except for neon signs. And that’s why we need to save them.”

Neon signs are in critical danger in Denver and other parts of Colorado because of low-cost alternatives in LED lights, restrictive building codes and a lack of awareness of their history in the Centennial State. But Matuszewicz and a handful of other neon enthusiasts are on a mission to save as many old signs as they can. And they are preaching the gospel of neon to all who will listen.

Colfax Avenue is the best example of the disappearance of funky neon signs that once advertised motels and restaurants with glowing cacti, blinking Native Americans and other illuminated Western iconography. But the avenue lost its neon luster as times changed. And a piece of history went missing when neon burned out and was abandoned, said Chris Geddes, a lecturer in the University of Colorado Denver’s historic preservation graduate program and a historic preservation specialist in Aurora.

“When you would drive down Colfax in the 1950s and 1960s, it was a neon alley,” Geddes said. “There’s so little of it left. The architecture of that time was fun and funky. It speaks to a different time.”

The Riviera Motel, including its neon sign, was designed by Richard Crowther, who worked as a neon light designer before moving to Denver to start his architecture career. Crowther is best known locally for designing the neon-lit ticket booths and signs for the Cyclone, Wild Chipmunk and other rides at Lakeside Amusement Park.

But there’s so much more to Denver’s neon history than the motels and restaurants that used to line Colfax, once dubbed the country’s “wickedest street.”

And Matuszewicz is leading the charge with the help of a small but dedicated group of neon enthusiasts.

Old and new neon

British chemists discovered neon gas in 1898 and, by 1910, a French engineer began producing and selling neon tubes for advertising signs. The first neon signs were introduced in the United States in the 1920s, and they quickly became a popular way to get the public’s attention. But the shine faded in the 1960s as cheaper alternatives emerged.

Over the years, neon’s popularity has ebbed and flowed with changes in taste and pop culture.

In Denver, a few old signs remain visible, including Jonas Bros Furs on Broadway, Davie’s Chuck Wagon Diner on West Colfax, Bonnie Brae Ice Cream on University Boulevard and the Branding Iron Motel on East Colfax.

But new signs are being created.

At Morry’s Neon Signs, Glen and Tina Weseloh create new neon signs every week for locations in Denver and surrounding areas. On Dec. 17, the Morry’s crew installed a 7-foot-tall skeleton drinking margaritas in a restaurant on downtown’s 16th Street.

Their sign shop opened in 1985 when Glen Weseloh’s father, Morry Weseloh, aged out of his tube-bending job with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and started his own company. Morry Weseloh taught his son how to create neon signs, and the work continued after he died in 2003 at the age of 85.

“I had no idea I would continue after he was gone, but it got into our blood,” Glen Weseloh said.

Inside their shop in Denver’s Athmar Park neighborhood, Glen and the other craftsmen work with graphic artists to sketch out designs. Once a design is agreed upon, they heat glass tubes to bend them into the shapes that will make the sign. The colors are made with neon gas, which glows when electricity runs through it. Tube benders also use stained glass, phosphorus and mercury to create other colors.

The Morry’s crew is often called to restore old, fading signs, including the marquees of the Oriental and Federal theaters, the Olinger sign in the Highland neighborhood, the Ironworks sign on Larimer Street and the glowing covered wagon sign outside the Frontier Drive-Inn in Center, Colorado.

The Weseloh family can also claim credit for Matuszewicz’s preservation work.

On again, off again

In 1987, Matuszewicz decided to go to neon school in Minneapolis after his wife, Emily Matuszewicz, mentioned that she had met a woman whose son was doing it. On a whim, he decided that was what he wanted to do, too.

“I didn’t have a favorite neon sign when I was a kid,” he said. “I knew nothing about it.”

So the Matuszewiczes left Denver so he could attend the Minneapolis School of Neon.

After working jobs in Minneapolis and Albuquerque, Matuszewicz made it back to Denver, and, in 1993, went to work at Morry’s Neon Signs. He stayed until 2020, when he decided the manual labor had taken its toll.

“No matter how long you do it, you get burned. You get cut,” he said. “It’s just hard to do it for a long time.”

So Matuszewicz traded a neon warehouse for a classroom and spent the next 15 years teaching first through eighth grades at the Denver Waldorf School.

Matuszewicz went back to college and earned bachelor’s degrees in chemistry and history at Metropolitan State University of Denver in 2017 — he had started in 1983 and refers to his college career as the “35-year plan.” He studied fermented beverage residues in archaeological pottery shards as an undergraduate project. So he thought the kombucha industry would be an interesting next-career step.

He got interviews. But he wasn’t hired.

“Maybe I’m making it up, but it seemed to me that as soon as I showed up, it was shocking that a 56-year-old man showed up,” Matuszewicz said. “You could see it in their face, ‘Like what?’ I don’t know it as a fact to be ageism, but it sure felt like it.”

Frustrated over a lack of opportunity, Matuszewicz was at a loss over his third act.

But his old friends in neon came calling. The Weselohs invited him to come back to the shop to help restore older neon signs.

His first project was the Independent Order of Odd Fellows sign on South Broadway.

“It’s a lovely, lovely sign,” he said. “We just started doing more and more and more of them.”

Along the way, Matuszewicz met Corky Scholl, a 9News photojournalist who documented neon signs in his spare time, and J.J. Bebout, who owns coffee businesses in Denver and Westminster, and who makes neon signs as a side gig.

Together, the three set about trying to save more neon.

“What’s up needs to stay up and what’s up and not functioning needs to be revived,” Bebout said.

Scholl was a walking catalogue who brought his journalistic objectiveness to preservation, Matuszewicz said. Scholl created and maintained the Save the Signs Facebook page, posting pictures and writing short histories of neon signs in Colorado.

“He let the history speak for itself,” Bebout said.

Scholl died unexpectedly in August, and it has been a blow to neon preservation in Denver, both men said.

“He was an encyclopedia of signs,” Matuszewicz said.

Bebout got into neon after looking for an art medium that also incorporated his knack for building things. He learned the craft in Cincinnati and then returned to Colorado.

Neon opportunities in Denver are rare, he said. Morry’s, along with Yesco, are the only two companies making neon in town.

“It’s a really small community here,” Bebout said. “The pool of folks who can teach is pretty small, and they just don’t because they’re all really old, and I say ‘old’ relative to the end of the lifespan of one’s career. They’re all at the end of it.”

Matuszewicz has been instrumental in helping Bebout perfect his skills, which he uses in his Westminster shop.

When Matuszewicz rekindled his interest in neon, he and his neon buddies started knocking on doors around the Front Range, asking property owners with dilapidated signs if they could help restore them.

One project was the Rossonian Hotel in the Five Points neighborhood. Matuszewicz brainstormed the idea to invite neon artists from across the country for a one-day “bendapalooza” to restore the hotel’s sign.

“It’s just sitting there rotting and we can’t just let it rot,” Matuszewicz said. “I went on this whole crusade to save it.”

But his pitch fell through.

“It was super discouraging to me. People wouldn’t listen to me,” he said. “I’m just a guy in a neon shop.”

Meanwhile, Matuszewicz had enrolled in CU Denver’s Change Makers program, in which participants explore new career options later in life. At first, he said he tossed out the idea of becoming a world-renowned busker of murder ballads. His classmates scoffed.

Then, once again, his background in neon shone. Everyone loved the idea of a historic preservationist who specialized in neon.

“The stars aligned,” he said.

Now that Matuszewicz has his master’s degree in historic preservation from CU Denver, his crusade is getting more attention. He’s become an in-demand speaker at historic preservation conferences around the United States.

“I’m like, ‘Oh my God, 300 people get to hear about neon,’” he said. “I’m so excited.”

Still, Matuszewicz’s focus is on Denver.

Neon versus LED

The Weselohs and their neon business are in a constant battle with LED.

The newer technology is pitched as more cost-efficient because it needs less electricity and, therefore, is less detrimental to the environment.

Two years ago, the iconic Benjamin Moore Paints sign at 2500 Walnut St. in Denver was replaced with LED by the building’s owners. At the time, Denver’s Landmark Preservation office told the Denver Gazette that the old neon was too deteriorated to restore.

The neon enthusiasts despise the new sign, especially since the old neon letters were destroyed and recycled.

Bebout describes the new Benjamin Moore sign as “flat and lifeless.”

“Benjamin Moore is a clean-looking sign but it lacks the character of neon,” Bebout said.

LED, which stands for light-emitting diode, became more common in the early 2010s as people looked for more efficient light bulbs. LED bulbs’ reputation as being cheaper to burn started pushing neon out of favor just as it was experiencing a sort of revival.

But neon fans argue that those who believe LED is less expensive are misinformed.

Neon, they say, lasts longer. An old neon sign can go for 100 years or longer with the right maintenance. And all the materials used to make it can be recycled, Matuszewicz said. Its elements are more readily available on the planet.

“It’s not a bunch of plastic and precious earth metals,” Bebout said. But he admitted one disadvantage for neon, “Now one thing is for sure, they do take more power. That’s one thing that can be argued.”

Neon also can’t be manufactured by a machine and requires skilled craftsmen to be created, Tina Weseloh said. LED, on the other hand, fades over time, and the plastic signs become more junk in a landfill because they cannot be repaired, they said.

City code departments also create barriers for neon signs, the Weselohs said.

Some towns outlawed flashing signs years ago in an attempt to modernize their codes and their cities’ appearances. Neon signaled “degenerate neighborhood,” Bebout said.

Centennial and Westminster are among the cities in Colorado that don’t allow blinking neon lights outside of businesses, Glen Weseloh said.

“That’s crazy! Why?” he said. “I don’t get it.”

In Aurora, Bebout restored the old Branding Iron Motel’s neon sign on East Colfax. That project almost didn’t happen because the city made the hotel owner pay a large egress fee because the sign stretched over the sidewalk, he said.

“You want to talk about discouraging preservation,” he said. “Most people are going to tear it up and put up a flat, lifeless LED sign.”

So the neon preservation crowd has its work cut out.

‘We need more Todds’

Matuszewicz’s next big neon preservation project is to get an art piece at 1350 Lawrence St. listed on the Colorado State Register of Historic Properties. It will be considered by the state’s Historic Preservation Review Board in January.

The Incomplete Square by neon artist Stephen Antonakas was installed on the side of the 11-story apartment building in 1982 and showcases 8-foot lengths of red neon mounted on the building’s exterior.

If approved, the piece will become the first time in Colorado that neon attached to a building will be designated historic when the building itself is not, Matuszewicz said.