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Take a tour behind the pipes at Organ Piper Pizza

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A restaurant dining room with several wooden tables and chairs positioned around a vintage organ.
Bobby Tanzilo
/
OnMilwaukee
The former Avalon Theater organ console, used daily at Organ Piper Pizza.

Every week on Urban Spelunking, Radio Milwaukee’s Nate Imig and OnMilwaukee’s Bobby Tanzilo dig into the buildings and architectural features that help retain the city’s sense of history while it builds for the future.

It’s an iconic Milwaukee-area pizzeria that, if you have visited, you’ll likely never forget. This week on Urban Spelunking, we visit Organ Piper Pizza, a Greenfield institution since 1976.

The dining experience is like none other in Wisconsin, combining live organ music set to a light show, with circus-esque décor, long community tables, stained-glass light fixtures and plenty of old-school charm. Even the organ console itself is historic; it was brought over from Bay View’s Avalon Theater and retrofitted with custom pipes to fit inside the restaurant.

In this episode, Bobby and I go into the rarely opened pipe room to see how the organ works, plus we head into the kitchen with owner Derek Paikowski to learn the secrets of the Organ Piper’s longevity.

Subscribe to Urban Spelunking for new episodes every Thursday from Radio Milwaukee and OnMilwaukee, and be sure to visit OnMilwaukee for more history and photos from our visit.

An inside look at the pipe room, visible to diners through a glass window.
Bobby Tanzilo
/
OnMilwaukee
An inside look at the pipe room, visible to diners through a glass window.

Director of Digital Content | Radio Milwaukee