The last house museum to open in Potchefstroom during the glorious days of heritage preservation in the 1970s and 1980s was the Goetz-Fleischack House. The town acquired three house museums, from 1977 to 1988. The first was the Totius House Museum (see link below) that opened in Molen Street in 1977, the second was the President Pretorius Museum in Van der Hoff Road (Thabo Mbeki) in 1980 (links below) and the Goetz-Fleischack Museum. It stands in Gouws Street (Sol Plaatjie) on the corner with Potgieter (Nelson Mandela) Street.
The Goetz-Fleischack Museum as depicted by Philip Bawcombe in 1988.
The house is associated with two of the prominent families of early Potchefstroom: AM Goetz, the first owner of the house, and his younger brother, MA Goetz, who were both mayors of Potchefstroom (see link below). Furthermore, the Fleischack family were prominent residents of the town for decades (link below).
The citation on the declaration of the Goetz-Fleischack residence as a National Monument on 12 September 1985 reads:
The restored Goetz-Fleischack House was erected for AM Goetz, resident magistrate of Potchefstroom, between 1860 and 1863 and is today the only so-called Karoo-style house in Potchefstroom that has maintained its original appearance. Together with the restored outbuildings on the property, the house therefore forms an important cultural history link with old Potchefstroom.
Andreas Marthinus (1834-1905) came to Potchefstroom in 1852. He initially built his home on the site now occupied by the Queen’s Hotel (today Impala) and was magistrate at the time of the First Anglo-Boer War in 1880/1 (ABO1), not only from 1860 to 1863 as stated above. See the link to my article on the Siege of the Potchefstroom Fort during the ABO1 below. Photo: Potchefstroom Museum
Typical example of a Karoo style building
The property in Gouws Street consists of the house, wagon house, stables, and cowshed. In front of the house there is a stone-paved water furrow with an extension into the yard to water the orchards at the back of the house.
This photo shows the Karoo style of the Goetz-Fleischack House at the time it was occupied by the Goetz family. The house had been restored to look like this, having had later alterations and additions during the restoration process removed. The house is a regarded as a typical example of the Karoo style with its flat roof, open veranda and cornice with ornamental medallions. It is the only surviving example of this type of house built around the market square. Photo: Potchefstroom Museum
The former market square was surrounded by Potgieter (Nelson Mandela) Street, Gouws Street (Sol Plaatjie), Wolmarans Street and Church (Walter Sisulu) Street. It now houses the town hall, Carnegie Library (see links), municipal building, Dan Tloome Chambers, other municipal buildings and gardens.
The house was built with evenly spaced glass doors made from yellowwood, opening on the street front. The double front door has a skylight. The house has seven rooms and the inner doors and roof beams were made from yellowwood. Initially the thatched roof had a ceiling made from reeds with a layer of clay on top of the reeds but under the roof. This was to prevent a fire spreading to the house if the easily combustible thatched roof catch fire. This ceiling was later replaced with a slatted wooden ceiling.
On the Jeppe map of Potchefstroom from 1863, the residence is shown. It served as residence of AM Goetz during the ABO1 when he was magistrate of Potchefstroom as appears from the Palk map of 1881.
Furthermore, AM Goetz later married the widow of OWA Forssman, Emelia, connecting him with another historically significant family of Potchefstroom. The fact that Goetz, who was the magistrate at the time of the ABO1, was interred in the Forssman residence during the war shows how intertwined the lives of the early residents of Potchefstroom were.
This extract of the map, drawn by Mrs Anna Palk directly after the ABO1 clearly indicates the residence of magistrate Goetz (spelled Goets by her) in Gouws Street. Source: Potchefstroom Museum
Enter the Fleischacks
Nowadays the Fleischack name is mostly associated with this house. However, the Fleischacks were earlier better known for being an attorney’s firm. Albert Rheinholdt Fleischack came to Potchefstroom in 1882 when he was appointed as magistrate’s clerk. He founded the attorneys’ firm in 1883 and it existed well into the 1990s. He married Johanna Hermina Goetz, daughter of AM Goetz.
AR Fleischack was appointed as “responsible clerk” in the office of the attorney general in 1894 and moved to Johannesburg. In 1896 he travelled to London to testify in Jameson’s trial. Shortly before his departure to London he was appointed as second legal commissioner and in 1899 as first legal commissioner. After the second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) he reopened his attorney’s practice in Potchefstroom. In 1905 Mrs Fleischack bought the dwelling that is now the Goetz-Fleischack Museum from her parents and the family moved there.
Albert Rheinholdt Fleischack passed away in 1933 at the age of 73. Photo: Potchefstroom Museum
This photo of the house is undated, but the museum staff, after much deliberation, is of the opinion that it was taken around 1905. The young boy in the picture is probably, Julius, the oldest son of Johanna Hermina and Albert Rheinholdt Fleischack. He was about eight to ten years old at the time. According to Arie Kuijers in his Historiese Geboue in Potchefstroom, the flat roof was replaced with a pitched roof probably after the 1880/1 war, due to damage suffered in this war. On her 1881 map Mrs Anna Palk marked every building in Potchefstroom damaged during the ABO1 with red dots. The Goetz residence, however, does not sport red dots on her map. This might be an oversight, since the residence was two blocks away from the magistrate’s office, where much of the action during the war took place. It is also thought that after the war a veranda, built with stink wood and a corrugated roof was also added. Photo: Potchefstroom Museum
The Fleischack family probably lived in the house until the passing of AR Fleischack in 1933. Their son, Gilbert, passed away in 1971 and the property was transferred to the town council on 18 September 1974.
A slow start to restoration
In her restoration report on the Goetz-Fleischack House, the curator of the Potchefstroom Museum, Mrs Mione du Toit, wrote that the restoration of this complex took some time.
Various factors prompted the decision to go ahead with the restoration. Du Toit cited the widening of Potgieter Street (now Nelson Mandela) in 1974/5 as one of them. At the time this street was widened to have two lanes going in both directions. Hence, the house directly north of the Goetz-Fleischack property was demolished in 1974. The Goetz-Fleischack property acquired more prominence due to the fact that it now stood on corner of one of the busiests streets in Potchefstroom.
The town council acquired the area, bordered by Potgieter, Gouws, Wolmarans and Meadow Streets with a view to building a civic complex.
Almost demolished
Although transfer took place in 1974, a plan dated 17 March 1972, for a civic theatre for Potchefstroom, indicated that the house was to be demolished to make space for a parking lot for the theatre! The theatre was never built after the government withdrew their promised 80% subsidy towards building costs for this theatre at the end of the 1970s. See link below to read more about the replacement for this theatre.
During the 1970s Potchefstroom became accutely aware of its heritage. Two historic houses were lost at the time. The one was the manse of the Hervormde Church which stood on the corner of Greyling (OR Tambo) and Potgieter (Nelson Mandela) Streets.This house also stood in the way of the new four lane Potgieter Street. The other was the historic Grimbeek farmstead on the farm Elandsheuwel (see link below) The demolition of the manse received much attention in the local press, making the residents more aware of the heritage lost.
Du Toit further stated that the restoration of the Totius House Museum which opened in 1977, the centenary year of Totius’s birth, took all the time and attention of the small staff of this Museum. This was followed by the restoration and opening of the President Pretorius Museum. In 1983 the new Library and Museum building opened next to the Goetz-Fleischack House and much time and attention were needed to plan and execute the placing of exhibits in this building. The restoration of the Goetz-Fleischack Museum could only receive attention after all these projects had been completed.
The restoration of all the house museums and the opening of the new Main Museum made the community more aware of its heritage and encouraged the residents of Potchefstroom to also endeavour to restore their own historic properties.
Rising like a phoenix
By 1987, Kuijers wrote that the restoration was underway. “Progress is made with the restoration work and the furnishing of the house and outbuildings as a museum. The original flat-rooffed building with its symetrical façade is rising like a phoenix from the considerably altered building with its corrugated roof, partially enclosed veranda with back extension and back veranda.”
The appearance of the Goetz-Fleischack Museum after restoration. Note the paved water furrow in front of the house. An extension of the furrow, into the yard, was used to water the orchards behind the house. Photo: https://museumexplorer.co.za/goetz-fleischack-museum/
The house was furnished to be a “visual document”, according to Kuijers, of the lifestyle of the first affluent citizens in the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek.”
One of the exhibits in the Museum is this tea cup which is part of a set. When the Prince of Wales visited Potchefstroom in 1925, Mrs Fleischack made this set available to serve tea to the Prince at the Country Club. The Prince of Wales, then known as David to his family, became King Edward VIII in 1936, but abdicated within months to marry the American divorcee, Wallis Simpson. (See link to my article on this princely visit below.)
Furniture from the collection of the Potchefstroom Museum was used to furnish the Goetz-Fleischack Museum. Note the copper plate on the back of the chair indicating that it was bequeathed to the Museum by Mrs Judith de Beer, néé Gouws, from the “Bezuidenhout/Gouws estate”.
Pantry shelves in the Goetz-Fleischack Museum.
The floor of the pantry and kitchen in the Museum is a peach-pip floor. Photo: offbeatperspective.wordpress.com
Peach pip floors
This is a traditional floor covering, only seen in South Africa, made from clay and peach pips. At the time the house was built wooden floors were a rarity in Potchefstroom. All wood for building purposes had to be transported from the coast over great distances and was used for roof beams, doors and windows. Hence, other floor coverings were a necessity. The Wesleyan Church, which was built in 1870’s at the back of where the Impala Hotel is today, caused a sensation when a wooden floor was installed. Jenkins wrote in A Century of History: “Farmers coming into town for marketing went to see the object of so much comment, before returning home. Until they had seen they could not and would not believe. ‘Wood is much too valuable for floors,’ they would declare, ‘people do not walk on wood, they use it to make tables, chairs and wagons.’”
A canopied copper bed in one of the bedrooms of the Goetz-Fleischack Museum. The canopy over this bed was not only for decoration, but to prevent particles of the clay layer above the reed ceiling and insects to fall on the occupants of the bed while sleeping.
Our family had this picture in the Goetz-Fleischack Museum in the 1990s. Photo: MacLez Studios
The Goetz-Fleischack Museum received many visitors over the years. Museum staff went to great lengths to engage the community. In the 1990s families were invited to have period photos taken in the house. This was done in collaboration with a local photographer. The museum had period clothes available for the sitters to wear in the photos, making them look like families from a century ago.
Unfortunately, the prominence of the Museum on the corner of two busy streets, which initially prompted its restoration, also brought it to the attention of vagrants and vandalism followed. This necessitated the erection of a security fence around the museum in 2021, which somehow mar the facade of the museum.
In spite of this, entering the museum takes you back to a bygone era, the last remnant of a time completely foreign to the people who live in today’s world.
The museum is open during office hours. Make enquiries at the Library, south of the museum, or the Main Museum, just across Nelson Mandela Street, to visit the Goetz-Fleischack Museum.
Links to articles:
Totius Museum: https://lenniegouws.co.za/theological-school-complex-heavy-with-history/
President Pretorius Museum:
https://lenniegouws.co.za/smithy-at-the-president-pretorius-museum-collapsed/
https://lenniegouws.co.za/street-names-reflect-history-8-m-n/
Goetz:
https://lenniegouws.co.za/street-names-reflect-history-5-g-h/
Town hall:
https://lenniegouws.co.za/stadsaal-is-meer-as-n-eeu-oud/
Carnegie library:
https://lenniegouws.co.za/the-potchefstroom-library-more-than-a-century-of-service-to-the-community/
Demolished manse:
https://lenniegouws.co.za/jurie-schoeman-larger-than-life/
Siege of the Fort:
https://lenniegouws.co.za/siege-of-the-potchefstroom-fort-a-story-of-sorrow-from-long-ago/
Prince of Wales:
https://www.citizen.co.za/potchefstroom-herald/news/2019/10/03/royal-visit-potchefstroom/
Replacement theatre:
https://lenniegouws.co.za/the-auditorium-that-almost-was-not/
