NFL History | Hagemeister Park, Green Bay — A Field With No Fence to Charge At

The Packers' first home ground had no fence, and that fact is the whole financial story of the club's first four years.

On 11 August 1919 a group of local athletes met in the editorial rooms of the Green Bay Press-Gazette. George Whitney Calhoun, the paper's editor, had run notices inviting them. Earl Lambeau, back in town after a year at Notre Dame, worked for the Indian Packing Company and got $500 out of his employer for jerseys and equipment on the condition that the team carried the company's name.

Two days later the paper announced that home games would be played at Hagemeister Park, listed thirty-eight candidates, most of them former East and West High players, and said full uniforms would go to twenty of them. At a second meeting on 14 August, with about twenty-five players present, Lambeau was elected captain and Calhoun manager.

Hagemeister Park was open ground beside East High School. No fence, no bleachers. Spectators stood along the touchline or walked the length of the field, and money was raised by passing a hat through the crowd during play. The team went 10–1 against clubs from Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

You cannot sell a ticket to a field anyone can walk onto. That, rather than any question of prestige, is why the Packers left Hagemeister after the 1922 season for Bellevue Park, and why City Stadium went up on this same school ground in 1925 with a gate on it. They played there until 1957.

The club's own history page is unusually candid that parts of the founding story cannot be recovered, and that the 1919 side had town-team predecessors going back to 1896. Two things are firm: the date the organisation observes is 11 August 1919, and the room was a newspaper office.

Coordinate: the historical marker at Green Bay East High School, on the Hagemeister Park ground. Two independent geocodes of the school agree to within about 90 m. The park itself was an unenclosed field with no surveyed boundary, so precision is ±200 m.

Cover: the Wisconsin historical marker for Hagemeister Park, on the flank of Green Bay East High School. Photo: Gonzo fan2007, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Second image: the restored City Stadium gate and ticket booth on the same grounds, under snow. This is the 1925–1956 stadium, not Hagemeister Park. Photo: Chad Davis, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.