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| The headline above the image is from December 4, 1933. |
A New York transplant named Ed Hall was running the bar in 1933. Those who came before him at Fifth and Ohio were either native Southsiders or part of the German-speaking immigrant community that had seeded it. Hall fit in, nonetheless. He joined Sacred Heart Church and softened the tavern’s rough reputation. Hall was there only six years. But in that time, he recast the tavern, making it family-friendly with an emphasis on dining and games. The place was back on track when Hall split in early 1938.
Katie Werner owned the property. She had bought it with her husband, Adolph, in 1922. Adolph was killed in 1931, but Katie and her children were still living in the apartment at the north end of the building. Katie wanted out of there. She put the property on the market, and in the meantime, leased the bar to a Sixth Warder named Frank Penzenstadler. Katie found a buyer a couple years later.
THE HOUR
The bar at Fifth and Ohio became Harry Witt’s Hour Tavern. This was not the first Hour Tavern in Oshkosh. And Harry Witt was not the real name of the man behind it.
He was Harry G. Witkowski, born in Menasha in 1909 to Polish-speaking immigrants. He grew up working in his father’s butcher shop. When his father died in 1928, the shop went to 19-year-old Harry. A few days later, Harry married an Oshkosh woman named Lucy Radtke. Harry quit the meat business, left Menasha and moved to the Sawdust City.
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| The original Hour Tavern (since demolished) with an announcement for its opening, August 25, 1934. |
Harry “Lefty” Witt revived the place, but he remained a renter. The Drumm family owned the property. They ran a saloon and then a speakeasy there until Gustave Drumm died in 1926. The Drumms didn’t want to sell. So Witt looked for someone who did. He found Katie Werner and the tavern at Fifth and Ohio.
Harry and family moved to Fifth and Ohio and took the Hour Tavern name with them. On April 8, 1940, he paid Katie Werner $2,700 (about $62,000 today) for the privilege of owning a bar. The low price reflected its condition. The place was beat. Witt spent the next 18 months remodeling the tavern and repairing the building. By December 1941, he had what he wanted.
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| December 6, 1941. |
Witkowski had picked up where Ed Hall left off. He installed a long bar, inserted a full dining room, and spent thousands on updates. The investment was rewarded. By the mid-1940s, The Hour ranked among the most popular Southside taverns. Harry Witt was known to everyone.
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| Harry “Witt” Witkowski |
Harry inducted his sons Fritz (James) and Jerry (Jerome) into the business. Then he began casting about for opportunities to expand. In 1958, they opened a second location in Menasha called the Hour Grill. The boys took over in Oshkosh. Harry ran the Menasha place.
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| An October 1958 ad for the Hour Grill in Menasha. |
Running two businesses was more trouble than it was worth. The Menasha Hour went up for sale in 1961. Harry returned to Oshkosh. He was at The Hour on New Year’s Day 1966, when he had a massive heart attack and died. Harry Witkowski was 56 years old.
Jerry Witt took over the tavern and began building onto it. A 1968 addition cost him more than $12,000 (about $115,000 today). Jerry continued the remodeling through the coming decade. The facelifts, one after another, expanded the facility and concealed the age of what was now a 90-year-old tavern.
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| Early 1970s. |
It looked good, but the foundation was weakening. In 1975, Jerry was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of tax evasion. He said it was a “mechanical error” and was acquitted after the IRS was unable to prove intent. Then in the summer of 1979, he had a heart attack. He was just 46. Jerry survived, but it led him to pull back.
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| Jerome “Jerry Witt” Witkowski |
TONY'S PLACE
There were mortgages on the property totalling $210,000 (almost $700,000 today) when Jerry sold The Hour in 1983. William Downie, a Wautoma investor hoping to flip the property, took it off his hands. Downie sold it to Merle and Geraldine Adams in October 1985. They closed the tavern the following summer and put it up for sale. And there it sat.
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| January 30, 1988. |
Jerry Becker bought it in March 1988. Becker was the area manager for MRI Development Corp. The MRI portfolio included several Oshkosh restaurants and taverns, including Mars Hamburgers, Baxter’s on High, and Mr. Lucky’s (now Molly McGuire's). Becker lived in Ripon, but was born in Oshkosh and said he wanted the tavern for sentimental reasons. “My parents ate at the Hour Bar every Friday night,” he said. The Hour became J.B.’s Hour Bar in July 1988.
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| Jerry Becker cutting a ribbon of dollar bills at the July 1988 reopening. |
All that turnover was damaging to a business built on its connection to the neighborhood. And the corporatized redirection was at odds with what the place had always been about. By July 1989, The Hour was on the verge of bankruptcy. So Becker leased the tavern to TP Enterprises Inc. Richard Backus of TP Enterprises was also a director of MRI Development Corp. The final break with the past came when they renamed the tavern. At the end of July 1989, it became Tony’s Place.
Jerry Becker stayed on as manager and took to looting the business. Becker skimmed the tavern’s receipts, swindling about $65,000 a year. He also stopped paying the mortgage. F&M Bank took the property in 1994 and then leased it to him. Becker continued his grift until he finally quit Tony’s Place in November 1996. He was later convicted of tax fraud and jailed. Rumors of the tavern’s demise were received as fact.
PLAYERS
In May 1997, F&M Bank sold the property to a quartet of brothers with deep, Southside roots. They reopened the tavern as Players Pizza and Pub. Al, Carl, Dean, and Steve Sosnoski were second-generation Americans. Their grandparents had migrated from Poland and Austria and arrived on the Southside of Oshkosh around 1904. The brothers were even cousins to Adolph Werner, the dry-law refusnik who ran a speakeasy in the tavern they had just purchased. The Sosnoski brothers may not have realized it, but the tavern at Fifth and Ohio was part of their lineage.
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| Brothers Steve, Al, Dean, and Carl Sosnoski, circa 1997. |
The tavern’s new manager had a Sixth Ward pedigree even more directly connected to its tavern culture. The Sosnoskis hired Carla Nigl, whose grandfather Alois Nigl launched Nigl’s Saloon at the northeast corner of 9th and Ohio in 1897. Carla had co-managed that bar in the late 1970s. At Players, she said, “We’re just trying to keep all of the positive things that were here before and trying to make it a family place.”
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| Carl Sosnoski and Carla Nigl, 2022. |
The Sosnoski brothers had 25 years at Players. They moved on after the death of Steve Sosnoski in November 2021. Tim Murray took over. He had previously owned Murray’s Irish Pub at 107 Algoma. Murray purchased the Players property in June 2022 and remains the owner under the banner of the Murray Hospitality Group. He currently runs two other restaurants, Murray’s Irish Pub and Pirates Cove, both in Menominee, Michigan.
This happened on August 12, 2026…
Nobody was hurt. The flames ripped through the interior and burned through the roof. Murray responded quickly, saying that the property can and will be saved. “It will be better than ever with the same feel and vibe,” he said. Initially, the fire was said to have been caused by an electrical connection in the HVAC system. The Oshkosh Fire Department has since designated the cause of the fire as "undetermined."
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| October 12, 2026. |
That tavern is now 143 years old. It’s come back from the brink before. Maybe that can happen again.
This is the third in the three part series covering the history of this tavern from its inception in 1883 through 2026. Here are links to the earlier posts…
Part 1: The Genealogy of Players
Part 2: A Sixth-Ward Mutiny
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