John Donnelly & Sons (1850-1978)

John Donnelly & Sons was founded in Boston, Massachusetts in 1850 by bill poster John Donnelly and became one of the most prominent outdoor advertising companies on the east coast. The company created many of the Boston area’s most iconic signs, including the Shell Oil Company and Gillette Company signs.

John Donnelly’s first clients included clipper ship operators advertising for passengers looking to participate in the Gold Rush in California, and P. T. Barnum, who was then promoting the famous opera singer Jenny Lind’s first American performances. In the 1870s, business expanded to theater owners, burlesque houses, and circuses. John Donnelly died in 1878. His widow Mary Ann Donnelly managed the business until 1882, when their son Edward Calvin Donnelly turned 21 and assumed leadership. In 1891, Edward C. Donnelly helped found the Associated Bill Posters Association to increase industry standardization. In the 1890s, the firm began to expand out of Boston into neighboring towns.

When Edward C. Donnelly died in 1927, he left the business to his sons, Edward C. Donnelly Jr. and John Donnelly. Then a freshman at Harvard University, Edward C. Donnelly Jr. left school to run the family business. John Donnelly joined as vice-president in 1934. In 1935, billboard legislation proposed by Edward C. Donnelly Jr.’s father-in-law, Governor James Michael Curley, embroiled the business in scandal. Curley set forth a bill that would remove the veto power over billboards from Massachusetts city and town governments and instead place it in the hands of a statewide director of advertising, widely understood to be in Curley’s control. The bill failed, but John Donnelly & Sons and their political connections would remain a controversial topic throughout the 1930s. Meanwhile, the business was expanding from posters and billboards into electric and neon signs. In the 1940s, a new manufacturing division for steel and aluminum manufacturing and radar products was formed. This division supported war efforts, including producing parts for the atomic bomb. The company also continued to expand its geographic reach, with offices in Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia by 1950, and later in Chicago, Illinois and Miami Beach, Florida.

National and local legislation regulating or banning billboards reduced business in the 1960s and 1970s. Although John Donnelly & Sons prided itself on serving local community interests and actively removed signs in scenic areas, the Highway Beautification Act of 1965 and the ban on billboards in Newton and Brookline contributed to the company’s gradual decline. Edward C. Donnelly Jr. died in 1972, and in 1978 the company was liquidated. The division of Donnelly Electric and Manufacturing Co. was acquired by its president and became DEMCO, which remained in business until the 1990s.