The Genealogy of Players

Player's Pizza & Pub caught fire on the evening of August 12, 2026. It burned into the early morning. The building at the northeast corner of 5th and Ohio was nearly destroyed.

After the fire, several news reports made token references to the significance of this place. One of them called Players a “decades-old gathering spot.” That was about as specific as it got.

​“Decades-old” is an extraordinary understatement. Players has a lineage stretching across three centuries. It began as one of the foundational saloons of the old Sixth Ward. There’s a lot of Southside culture tied up in that damaged building.

Wolter’s Bar and Grocery
It began 143 years ago with a Bohemian immigrant named August Wolter. On September 8, 1883, Wolter paid $700 (about $23,500 today) for Lots 13 and 14 in Block 95 in the Plat of the Original Third Ward. The plat name was already outdated. The Original Third Ward had encompassed almost all of the land south of the Fox River. But in 1871 the ward was divided. Everything west of Minnesota Street went into the newly minted Sixth Ward.

An 1886 map with a red highlight showing the location of the Sixth Ward land Wolter purchased in 1883. The area was sparsely developed and etched by railroad tracks. The segment of Ohio Street next to Wolter’s property was as narrow as an alleyway.

A small home was all that stood near that corner when August Wolter got there. Wolter came to America in 1872 when he was 21. He wasted no time. Before the year ended, Wolter had found a wife. A German fresh off the boat named Augusta Josephine Neubauer. They went to Weyauwega and settled on a farm that held them for almost a decade.

When the Wolters returned to Oshkosh, they had four kids and enough for a down payment on the property at 5th and Ohio. Again, the Wolters worked quickly. They built a two-story structure that hugged the corner and outfitted it with a saloon and grocery. The opening date is lost. They may have been in business before the close of 1883. But by the spring of 1884, the Wolters most definitely had their two ventures up and running. They would be at that corner for the next 20 years.

From the 1884 Oshkosh City Directory. The Wolter’s residence at 276 Fifth was the original street address for what is now a parking lot on the east side of the building.

The 1880s were ripe years for grocery/saloon hybrids. Oshkosh had more than a dozen of them, four in the Sixth Ward alone. The ward was a magnet for Bavarian and Bohemian immigrants. Wolter’s saloon became an anchorage for immigrants trying to find their place in a foreign city that was now their home.

The Sixth Ward was also on its way to earning its brawling reputation as the “Bloody Sixth Ward.” But Wolter contributed nothing to that project. August Wolter ran an orderly saloon, largely free of the mayhem that plagued so many Oshkosh bars. The agreeable atmosphere fostered Wolter’s success. The social lubricant was fresh beer from Horn & Schwalm’s Brooklyn Brewery. It was the only draft beer Wolter served.

An 1891 advertisement for Horn & Schwalm’s Brooklyn Brewery at 16th and Doty in Oshkosh.

The saloon grew so prosperous that it squeezed out the grocery. From 1899 onward, Wolter’s saloon occupied the entire ground floor of the building. The Wolters family moved into the rooms upstairs.

A 1903 map of the neighborhood clustered around 5th and Ohio. The street address for Wolter’s Saloon was then 280 Fifth. Before moving into the rooms above the saloon, the Wolters family had lived at 276 Fifth. Click map to enlarge.

Pabst Brewing had been watching Wolter’s saloon grow. When the Milwaukee brewery came calling, Wolter sold out. Pabst purchased the building and business on September 22, 1905. And with that, August Wolter retired. He was 54.

The New Brew at the old Wolter’s Saloon. Oshkosh Daily Northwestern August 5, 1905.

Bobbie's Inn
Otto Ziegenhagen lived next door to the saloon in the house the Wolters family had previously lived in. Otto was 36, the eldest son of German immigrants. He worked at Paine Lumber and seems to have been moonlighting at Wolter’s saloon. After Pabst bought it, Otto went behind the bar full time. He was the kind of guy Pabst liked for its tied-houses. Otto Ziegenhagen was a Republican ward heeler and known to absolutely everyone on the Southside.

Otto Ziegenhagen turned out to be part of a package deal. His younger brothers Ed and Bob, both living a couple of doors east of the saloon, began working for him. In 1909, brother Bob took over. He was 27 and destined to become a lead horse in Pabst’s Oshkosh stable. The saloon was renamed Bobbie's Inn, and it flourished.

From the 1914 Oshkosh City Directory. The street addresses had been renumbered in 1908 and would change again in 1957. The Ziegenhagen home at 830 5th is now addressed as 536 W 5th and still stands.

Pabst soon had bigger plans for Bobbie Ziegenhagen. In 1918, he was reassigned to a place a block south: The brewery's marquee saloon at the southeast corner of 6th and Ohio. It was called the Pabst Exchange, and it was the most elaborate beer hall on the Southside. That building remains at the southeast corner of 6th and Ohio.

The Pabst Exchange, circa 1900.

At 5th and Ohio, Pabst brought in a new guy named Mike King. But King’s career as a saloon keeper got aborted by an obnoxious mistake called National Prohibition. And that changed everything. The mild, old Wolter’s saloon transformed into a rowdy, lawless place. That part of this history requires a monograph all its own. I plan to have that posted here in a couple of weeks.

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