Goelz's Triangle

12/01/2025

10/22/2024

Seems pretty definitive of the existence of "Goelz Triangle".

07/31/2024

I walked by the Goelz home on S. Clement Ave. with my sister and niece in June, and the owner Mr. Miller, sensing a "tour", came out.
I reminded him that I stopped by in the 1980s and gave him a picture of the home (c. 1878).
He told me he had the title packet that came with the property, dating back to c. 1850!

Too bad Ron Winkler didn't check with the owner while not doing any research on the Goelz property for his Town of Lake book.

Or was there some other purpose to mis-identifying the home since I heard Ron asked MPL to turn over my German Newspapers data to him & the Bay View Historical Soc. (A Deed of Gift agreement protects my work at MPL - although they'd be happy to ignore that, if possible.)

03/18/2024

This authentic "obituary" for Margaret Goelz, daughter of Georg & Anna Gertrud (Gassen) Goelz, is really good evidence for who owned this property at 3273 S. Clement Ave., and for how long. When Expert Ron Winkler was intending to include a photo of the house in his Town of Lake book you'd have thought he would've typed this address into the newspaper subscription site at the Milwaukee Public Library. Or was Ron just P.O.'d because my project called "Milwaukee's German Newspapers ..." wasn't turned over to him upon request? That's not a far-fetched question in Milwaukee's world of entitled WASP Boomer well-Pensioned Retirees.

03/18/2024

Rose Goelz, daughter of Georg & Gertrud (Gassen) Goelz, was the last of the their children. She had already signed over the remains of the farm and home on S. Clement Ave. in lieu of assisted living care at the hospital. The property that siblings Lorenz & Joh. Geo. had received fronting on Whitnall and Howell, north of Bradley was still in descendants hands, with the last lot leaving descendant's hands in about 2008.

07/26/2023

The arrangement with Alderman Paul Gauer to create "Goelz Triangle", or "Goelz's Triangle", was actually made for 2nd generation, native born, Lorenz Goelz and not his father George.

07/12/2023

Civil War Gold Star veteran Adam Gölz (1845-1865), was a nephew to Georg Goelz (1820-1913) & cousin to Lorenz Goelz (1855-1937), who inspired naming of this tiniest of Milwaukee's tiny parks. Adam's father was also a Lorenz Goelz (1817-1887).

03/24/2023

It was as simple as using the Milwaukee City Directories to track down a time-frame for "Goelz Triangle" from its creation to being "uncreated". I puzzled over the story with extended family for a while, checking different archives. But the family 'story' was easily confirmed by the directories.

03/20/2023

Landscaping plans collected from City of Milwaukee Archives. This was a City of Milwaukee Park before the entire parks system was turned over to Milwaukee County.

10/27/2022

"Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!" (Sir Walter Scott, 1808)

Photo of the 93 year old George Goelz, c. 1913, on his front porch on S. Clement Ave. He's reacting to Ron Winkler's misidentified picture of the Goelz home in his book of Town of Lake. Ron did absolutely NO RESEARCH on the home, and instead of saying so, wrote that the owner/builder was unknown, but possibly a "Gumber". I have showed elsewhere how easy it is to identify the Goelz family as owners of the property, going back to the 1850s/60s: enter the post-1929 address into an appropriate online newspaper site to find the brief family story in obits.

10/16/2022

Here's an entry of "Goelz Triangle" from the Milwaukee City Directory, under "Parks".