Harvey G. Bell, 74, flooring company owner and Northern Liberties booster
N. 2d Street near Germantown Avenue used to be a bustling retail corridor with six floor covering businesses. Now it has one - Bell Floor Covering - owned by the family of Harvey Bell. When other retailers left Northern Liberties, he stayed and helped uplift the area. Mr. Bell has died at age 74.
Harvey G. Bell, 74, of Bala Cynwyd, a businessman in Northern Liberties who was actively engaged in promoting the community even as the times changed and other merchants left, died Tuesday, Jan. 22, of lung cancer at home.
Mr. Bell was the third-generation owner of Bell Floor Covering, a business begun in 1919 by his grandfather. The establishment initially offered cabinetmaking and bookselling services but switched to flooring in the 1930s during the Great Depression.
After Mr. Bell took over the firm in 1971, he added a warehouse in Fishtown and began offering delivery and installation services to customers as far away as the Jersey Shore and the Poconos.
Bell Floor Covering was one of six flooring businesses on North Second Street near Germantown Avenue in a bustling commercial corridor known as “Linoleum Lane.” Over time, all the other businesses fled the area, but Bell Flooring stayed.
“My grandfather told my dad to leave Northern Liberties back in the 1960s, as the neighborhood began to deteriorate,” said Mr. Bell’s son Matthew. “My dad did not leave. He believed in the store and dedicated his life to making sure it stayed open. He helped lift this neighborhood up."
“We’re a landmark,” Mr. Bell told Logic, a business journal. “People know the store and they keep coming back. We’re doing business now with the third and fourth generations of the same families.”
Mr. Bell joined the Northern Liberties Neighbors Association (NLNA) as a leader and member of the group’s zoning committee to help control development in the area. In recent years, the neighborhood has undergone gentrification.
“Harvey donated goods, services, money, and most importantly his time, can-do attitude, and acumen,” the association wrote online. “The many neighbors, fellow volunteers, and customers who knew Harvey cherish his dedication to the neighborhood he loved.”
Matt Ruben, president of the neighborhood association, described Mr. Bell as a pillar of the community.
“He served on the NLNA zoning committee and the NLNA board, where among many other things he came up with innovative fund-raising initiatives, helped boost membership activity, and acted as an informal and effective liaison to the Northern Liberties business community,” Ruben said.
Matthew Bell said his father volunteered his time to help shape development at a point when the neighborhood “was exploding with new construction.” In the last two decades, Northern Liberties has become a go-to place for young adults, with renovated homes and trendy bars and eateries.
Mr. Bell also started a gumball machine fund-raiser for the NLNA, purchasing at his own expense a dozen gumball machines, getting them placed at area businesses, and keeping them supplied and maintained. For many years, the campaign raised between $2,000 and $3,000 a year for the NLNA.
He helped organize events and fund-raisers to foster neighbor involvement and was “a voice of wisdom, reason, and business and financial acumen — something a volunteer civic group always is in need of, and isn’t always so fortunate to get,” Ruben said.
Mr. Bell also took a leadership role in his industry, becoming president of the Delaware Valley Flooring Association and increasing its membership, his son said.
Born in Philadelphia, he graduated from Lower Merion High School. He married Sue-Ann Briskin in 1975. The couple had two sons. The family moved to Bala Cynwyd in 1976.
When not working, Mr. Bell enjoyed rearing his sons, making toys for them, and coaching Little League in Lower Merion. He grew flowers and vegetables in a garden behind his store and made trivets, plant pads, and decorative items out of corks that were too defective for wine bottles.
“I hit the dad lottery jackpot, I did,” said his son.
In addition to his wife and son Matthew, he is survived by another son, Joseph; two grandchildren; and a sister.
Services will be at 1:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 27, at Main Line Reform Temple, 410 Montgomery Ave., Wynnewood. Interment will be in Haym Salomon Memorial Park.
Memorial contributions may be made to Northern Liberties Neighborhood Association via http://www.nlna.org/