Astor Hotel Bar

The Astor Hotel (209 N. Adams) was a three-story brick single-occupancy hotel with an adjoining Hotel Bar and barber shop.  It was one of the city's oldest hotels, named after fur trader John Jacob Astor, who made Green Bay one of Wisconsin's first settlements in 1835.  

It was so old, in fact, that nobody seems quite sure of when it was originally built.  It seems it was just always there.

The Astor Hotel was located in the heart of a thriving city, filled with restaurants, taverns, theaters, and department stores. Along with the Hotel Northland, the Astor anchored a vibrant commercial strip that was busy day and night. Popular neighbors included Oliver's Ice Cream and Bosse's News Depot. It was a perfect place for bachelors to live in downtown Green Bay.

In 1929, new owners Jake Geurts and Herman Holz extensively remodeled the Astor Hotel, which had already fallen on hard times. They marketed the hotel to men, especially traveling businesmen visiting local companies. Soon, it was discovered by the Green Bay Packers, who used it as housing for its unmarried players unlikely to sign expensive and binding apartment leases.

The Astor became a frat house of young, wild, rambunctious men, overseen by house mother Sue Wallen, hotel manager from 1937 to 1947.  Wallen was a divorced mother whose son, Earl, died heroically at age 21 at Pearl Harbor.  In turn, she "adopted" many Packers players over the years, and saw every home game from her seat at the 50-yard line. 

"We made them feel at home while living in a strange city with no roots," said Sue. "We looked after the players like they were our own kids."

"Sue knew every player, their mom, their dad, and their girlfriends," said Nolan Luhn (Green Bay Packers, 1945-1949.) "She was a real nice lady. She'd talk to every player every day. She'd screen prank calls too!"

When they weren't practicing, playing, or traveling, resident Packers spent a lot of time at the lobby bar.  While accessible from the outside, the Astor Hotel Bar was separated from the hotel lobby only by a small partition that contained the men's restroom. It was not remembered as an especially nice, large, or modern bar, but it was always quite busy with residents and locals.

As many as 20 players lived at the Astor at its heights.  Sue Wallen specifically remembered "visitors" (invited and uninvited) entering the hotel's alleyway back entrance and finding their way to the upstairs rooms.  She spoke of "shooing" groupie girls away from the players' room doors.

Some Astor rooms had a full bathroom, some rooms had just a toilet, and others only had a sink. There were shared shower rooms on each floor. The rooms were described as "pretty sparse... almost like a nunnery." Throughout its history, the Astor never installed an elevator.

Sue remarried and left Green Bay for Pennsylvania in 1947. However, some players were still living at the Astor when Vince Lombardi joined the Green Bay Packers in 1959.  It was still known as an aggressively male space.

Over the next few years, the hotel became increasingly run down, and the lobby, bar, and crowds became increasingly seedy.  After the Packers stopped staying there, the bar crowds were described as "a mixed bag," while the hotel became more of an apartment house.

Shortly after midnight on February 4, 1966, the Astor Hotel was destroyed by the worst fire in Green Bay history.  Survivors escaped the blaze by climbing out onto the hotel's marquee sign. Victims found themselves trapped in a central light court with no way out. The hotel roof collapsed within one hour of the fire erupting, which delayed firefighters from searching rooms.  Investigators found that many of the hotel room windows had been nailed or painted shut, making rescue efforts very difficult.  

The fire attracted a crowd of hundreds of spectators, despite chilly temperatures and extensive danger.  The blaze was not extinguished until 7:45 a.m.

Fortunately, the fire did not extend to the Astor's neighbors. While the cause was never determined, "faulty wiring" was originally suspected. Later, it was determined that the fire began in a cleaning closet on the first floor, where paint and varnish had been stored indoors.  Sadly, the hotel's fire alarms had just been serviced a few days prior, and it appears some were never repaired.

The Astor Hotel Fire claimed the lives of eight residents and caused over $250,000 in damage. 

One of the victims was Myrtle Muenster, 62, long-time bartender at the Astor Hotel Bar.  "Elsie" (last name unknown,) another popular bartender, survived the fire.

The remaining 30 residents, mostly senior citizens, were permanently displaced. Survivors were taken to the Hotel Northland for medical services.

"We loved every one of those boys and everybody loved being here," Sue Wallen told the Green Bay Press-Gazette. "We had so much fun in those days."

"No words can describe the affection this once elegant hotel held in the hearts of many of the players wearing the Packers uniform," wrote George Haydon to the Milwaukee Journal. "The scope and color of its memories were a match to the authenticity of its historic name."

In 1971, a Brown County jury awarded $290,000 to victims families due to the absence of proper fire alarms.

In May 1983, Sue Wallen passed away at Oconto Memorial Hospital at age 86.

Today, the Astor Hotel footprint is occupied by a parking lot for Baylake Bank.

Note:  Very little is known about the queer heritage of the Astor Hotel, specifically how and why it became a safe queer space.  We suspect the homosocial culture of the hotel had something to do with it. We list 1963 as a start date only because that's the first year it was documented by the Lavender Baedeker (which debuted in 1963) -- and it's likely that it was active long before then.