Ex-alderman drives to fetch Goldmann’s neon sign
In December, you may recall, I reported that the neon sign from Milwaukee’s beloved Goldmann’s Department Store wasn’t coming home from North Dakota where it lay rusting in a field.
Well, forget all that. The sign is back, thanks to businessman and former Milwaukee Ald. Jim Witkowiak who drove out there himself last weekend and got it.
Witkowiak hooked a 20-foot trailer to his pickup truck and traveled 850 miles to fetch a sign that glowed for decades on Mitchell St. where he grew up.
Goldmann’s, 930 W. Historic Mitchell St., closed in 2007 after 111 years in business. The sign was removed in 2015 and plopped in the parking lot out back.
The hope was that someone locally would come along and preserve it, but the only person who showed interest was Minot, N.D., junk dealer Greg Baumgarten, who paid $500 and dragged it home to join the many other signs he had collected.
Last year, Adam Levin launched a crusade to bring the sign back to Milwaukee. The history buff turned to the 35,000 members of his Facebook group, Old Milwaukee, who kicked in $2,000, the price Baumgarten demanded.
But offers by various trucking companies to transport the sign fell through. Dispirited, Levin began returning the money to donors and saying
the plan was dead.
That’s where Marykay Piacentine Certalic, an Old Milwaukee fan, comes in. She contacted longtime friend Witkowiak and asked if he could help. Witkowiak owns Witkowiak Funeral Home at 5th and Mitchell and other businesses.
“Out of the goodness of my heart and perhaps a little bit of stupidity, I said I can get the sign here. That’s no big deal,” he said.
After re-raising the money, Levin paid Baumgarten. Witkowiak waited for a free weekend with good travel weather for the three-day trip. Minot is 100 miles off the interstate through some pretty remote country. Witkowiak calls it Fargo times two.
He arrived at Baumgarten’s place last Sunday. They hoisted the 26-foot, 800-pound treasure onto the trailer with a forklift and Witkowiak hit the road.
“People were looking at me. They were blowing the horn. They were giving me thumbs up. I’m in North Dakota and Minnesota, and I’m thinking these people don’t even know Goldmann’s,” he said.
He brought the black and white sign to his manufacturing facility in Big Bend where it will be restored. The support brackets are rusty and the neon tubes are missing or broken. Also gone is a portion of the sign that announced to shoppers, “Open tonite.”
Restoration likely will take a year or more, Witkowiak said. The cost of that work is unclear, but Levin plans to raise more money to cover it.
Goldmann’s, with its creaky floors, remarkably large-size clothing for sale, lunch counter and popular candy raisins, is no more. So where will the sign go now?
The plan is to mount it on a pedestal of sorts near the sidewalk in a parking lot at 5th and Mitchell owned by Witkowiak. If approval from the city’s Historic Preservation Commission is granted, the vertical neon will shine once again in the neighborhood, but from the other side of the street.
“It should be the same height that it was when it was on the building, so you get the proper scale from the sidewalk when you’re looking up,” Witkowiak said.
For Levin, the quest to reclaim the sign has been a mix of trials and triumph.
“It’s back home,” he said, “and that’s all that matters.”